Tag: Nextdoor

The Most Popular Posts

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Earlier this week I was perusing my Nextdoor website for recommendations for some housework that we need to have done. I believe that this was the original intention of Nextdoor, as it focuses on one particular community, usually within a 20 mile radius. Unfortunately, though, like almost all social media websites, our Nextdoor has also become a political fight, “mask vs. anti-mask”, “vax vs. anti-vax” nesting ground, among other heated, controversial topics, both local and national. I usually avoid these posts, as if they were the most contagious variant of the coronavirus out there, but I somehow got curious about a particular post written by a neighbor named John Guidi, that was noted as the day’s most popular post. It turned out to be a well-written, hilarious, sarcastic post, starting with this line:

“Political posts: If you feel you must make controversial posts on this board, please adhere to the following guidelines:”

Here were some of the guidelines:

5. Make sure to condemn somebody in every post.

8. Try to offend as many people as possible.

11. Always attempt to be very defensive.

15. No matter what someone else posts, always try to find fault with it.

17. State and restate the obvious.

I honestly read the post with glee and apparently so did many others in our neck of the woods, as it had over 200 likes and “thank yous” and smiley faces attached to the post, and 177 comments, comments which turned out to be a lot more of the usual back-and-forth, righteous, “rule” additions, posturing at the podium, etc.

I then took a look at the second most popular post of the day, which turned out to be a mother sincerely asking for recommendations for a local therapist for her adolescent son, who is suffering from depression. Her post showed earnest concern and desperation. Her name and her picture and her neighborhood, were all published on the post. And the beautiful thing is that the people who answered and commented on her post, were so kind and loving and honest about their own struggles and situations. She got dozens of recommendations and many tender and hopeful and caring posts, sending love and prayers for her comfort and for her son’s recovery. I got a lump in my throat thinking about how courageous it was for this mother to publicly admit that she needed some help. And the people of my neighborhood and surrounding areas could not have been more kind and understanding, and thoughtful and compassionate with the posts that they wrote to answer her plea. She wrote a sincere “thank you” post more than once throughout the Comments section.

Wow. That’s when I got my own personal “a-ha” moment. As well written as the first post was, it really wasn’t any different in tone, than so many of the biased political posts that we are besieged with, on social media today. Reading the first post and agreeing with it, I realized that right at that moment, I, myself, was in my own high-and-mighty, judgmental, “I am smarter/wiser than”, smirky, condescending ego mindset. It felt “good” and yet not good, all at the same time. Reading the second post, I was humbled. Being a mother, I felt so much empathy for the fear that we mothers feel when we can’t protect and heal our own children, all by ourselves. I felt so much admiration for that mother and equally, I felt so much gratefulness that my community responded like it did, with concern and support and hopefulness. I suspect that the people who answered her, came from many different backgrounds, political and otherwise. Reading her post and the responses to it, was affirming to me. I felt good. Just good. I felt connected to everybody in my neighborhood, not just the people who share my beliefs.

Do You Want To Be “Right” Or “Happy”? - NICOLEVALEK.COM | Choose happiness quotes, Strong mind quotes, Happy quotes

Tom

Tom lives in our neighborhood. He is big and bold and he’s always carousing around for ladies. He’s a handsome, confident guy. Tom spends most of his time hanging out on the corner of a major intersection in the neighborhood. Tom has become sort of a mascot or maybe a unifying symbol of our neck of the woods, and we all love him. Tom is a big old wild turkey.

The other day on our Nextdoor social media app, one neighbor posted an angry rant about the people who are supposedly feeding Tom. This was followed by righteous posts about the dangers of feeding wildlife, and then other posts about how frustrating it is when Tom is strutting his stuff and causing traffic jams, and then other posts about how neighbors need to stop being so mean and cynical, to stop driving so fast, and just enjoy the fact that we live in the midst of so much natural wonder, which was followed up by further posts from other people, who live outside of our neighborhood, admonishing everyone to just “chill out”, which sparked angry posts from inside of the neighborhood, asking those posters why they even felt they had any right to talk about Tom, because they probably had never even seen him! All of these paragraphs and paragraphs of posts continue on and on, with the usual likes and dislikes, and hearts, and happy face emoticons and angry faced emoticons. I believe that even at this moment, “the infamous Tom thread” on Nextdoor, is still quite healthy and active.

Do you know what a group of turkeys is called? It’s called a rafter. Watching the antics of the excitable “Tom thread” on our local social media, makes me realize that we have quite a rafter here, in our neighborhood. Turkeys abound. But my one and only favorite wild turkey is Tom. He doesn’t read Nextdoor. He just hangs out at the corner, doing his thing.

804,073 Turkey Photos - Free & Royalty-Free Stock Photos from Dreamstime

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Caterpillar

I don’t spend very much time on social media, but I do check out our Nextdoor app on a regular basis, to keep apprised of what is going on in our neighborhood and to get good recommendations for repair people and the like. Often, people post pictures of their missing pets on Nextdoor, and almost always, before the end of the day, the pet is found and everyone posts kind words of relief and happiness that the fur kids are back at home, with their beloved families.

Recently, a woman posted frantic requests for help to find her cat. Days and days went by, and everyone posted words of encouragement and hope for the fraught lady to find her kitty. Finally, after twenty days, her precious kitty was found and reunited with our neighbor. The relieved woman wrote a post thanking everyone for their love and concern and for sharing her joy, in the cat’s safe return home. She posted, “Don’t ever underestimate the power of prayer!”

This experience reminded me of Caterpillar. Caterpillar was my cat, growing up and he was a legend. We called him Pillar. Pillar was a huge, long-haired, grey tabby cat. Retrospectively, Pillar probably was a Maine coon cat, but back in the late 1970s, cats were just cats, and we got Pillar by responding to an ad in the local Pennysaver, from a lady whose cat unexpectedly had kittens. Still, Pillar was a gorgeous cat and he totally lived life on his own terms. He was an indoor/outdoor cat, as most cats were back then. From his outdoor adventures, Pillar often brought us “presents”, alive and dead, and we had to chase live birds, their wings flapping frantically, out of our home, more times than I can count.

Pillar adored my sister and she adored him. Although, my sister had terrible allergies, she wore Pillar around her neck, like a slinky fur stole, as she went about her day, playing with her toys. Pillar slept with my sister every single night, right on top of her head. To this day, my sister is a “cat person.”

Pillar followed us around wherever we went. If we went on a walk, before you knew it, out of nowhere, Pillar would pop out of the bushes, to show you that he was along for the adventure. When we would go sled riding, Pillar would chase our sleds and little ice balls would be attached to the back of his furry legs, because we would stay out in the snow, all day long. And Pillar stayed with us.

Pillar cemented the idea into my head, that cats truly do have nine lives. As I said, he lived life on his own terms. Once we took him on our vacation and he wasn’t happy about being at a lake house far from home. He camped out under the lake house, and we ended up spending half of our vacation looking for him. Pillar liked attention. Once, when my dad sold our boat, and the new owner, having driven the boat home, several hours and hundreds of miles away, called us, to let us know that Pillar had been a stowaway on the boat. Sadly, one year, Pillar almost died of a urinary tract infection, but our vet was so taken with Pillar, that our vet spent his Christmas, with Pillar at his personal home, nursing him back to life. That was the one of the best childhood Christmas presents we ever got. Pillar lived!!

Memories about Pillar came up for me a lot, these past couple of weeks, following my neighbor’s daily posts, asking everyone to keep an eye out for her kitty. You see, one time Pillar disappeared for a very long while. Pillar disappeared from our lives for days that turned into weeks and then into months, nowhere to be found. Despite our desperate shouts and long “hunts” for Pillar, he didn’t come home. I remember clearly, one day, my mother stating to me that it would be best for me to accept that Pillar was “gone” and that he probably wasn’t coming back. I was probably around 10 years old at that time.

That day, I remember so clearly and vividly, climbing high up into a big old apple tree that shaded our yard. I climbed as high as I could go and I cried. I sobbed. And then I prayed. I’ve stated before that I don’t consider myself a religious person, but I am a deeply spiritual person. Luckily for me, my intense faith has been with me, ever since I can remember, and my faith has never wavered. I have always had a very personal relationship with my Creator. After I cried and I prayed, I felt that soothing, regulating, peace and calm, that only my Creator can give to me. I climbed down from the apple tree and I went about my day. Pillar came home, a few days later.

Pillar lived to a ripe old age. I was already married and out of my parents’ home, the day that he died. My mother said that as Pillar took his last breaths, he reached out to try to catch a fly who had landed near to him. Hunting was always Pillar’s greatest passion.

We have all been suffering gut punches left and right, since practically the beginning of this year, which we (not so fondly) call 2020. When my memories flooded back about Caterpillar, our childhood cat, these past few days, I was reminded of my friend who has been texting pictures of the cocoons that she has been watching carefully in her well-tended butterfly farm. She has released several gorgeous butterflies into the world these last few days, and it has been so much fun to watch the progression, through her pictures, which started with snaps of striped caterpillars chewing on their leaves. Interestingly, towards the end of the cocoon stage, the cocoon gets so translucent that you can make out what the butterflies will look like. You can see what the butterflies will look like, before they even know what beautiful creatures, they have become. I think that we are all in the cocoon stage these days. We are sometimes hanging on by a thread, like I felt that day in my childhood, clinging to the branch of the apple tree, crying out to our Creator. Yet, we are being protected in our cocoons, and our Creator can already see the marvelous transformations that have happened and are still happening to us, during this difficult, transformative stage.

Let’s hold on to hope, friends. Let’s know the power of prayer. Let’s just try to rest in our cocoons, for now. Let’s visualize our cocoons surrounding us with the energy of Love. There is nothing stronger than Love. And it’s protecting us. Fiercely.

The Masked Man

Image via screengrab

I don’t enjoy wearing the masks. They are uncomfortable, hot and they make me feel unfriendly. My son who lives in New Jersey, said that he saw a woman in the grocery store wearing a mask with slits cut out under her nose and her mouth. It kind of defeats the purpose, right? Still, I empathized with her. Once again, I’m in total awe of all of our essential workers, who wear the masks hours and hours, on end. The following post went viral in my local Nextdoor neighborhood social media. The person who posted it, said that she did not write it, nor did she know who to attribute it to, but I’m glad that she posted it anyway. It hits home.

“I wear a mask in public, NOT for me, but for YOU. I want you to know that I am educated enough to know that I could be asymptomatic and still give you the virus. No, I don’t “live in fear” of the virus, I just want to be a part of the solution, not the problem. I don’t feel like the “government is controlling me,” I feel like I’m being a contributing adult to society, and I want to teach others the same. The world doesn’t revolve around me. It’s not all about me and my comfort. If we all could live with other people’s consideration in mind, this whole world would be a much better place. Wearing a mask doesn’t make me weak, scared, stupid or even “controlled,” it makes me considerate. When you think about how you look, or how uncomfortable it is or what others think of you, just imagine someone close to you, a father, a mother, a grandparent, an aunt or uncle choking on a ventilator. Then ask yourself if you could have worn a mask to prevent their suffering would you have?”

I love the idea of being “considerate”. I love the idea of being “part of the solution.” We are like one worldwide team trying to conquer this horrible virus. It’s good to be reminded that we are all on the same team.

Stay Level

RIP – Kenny Rogers, thank you for all of the wonderful, memorable, easy to sing along with tunes!

Here’s some things that I have read over the last couple of days that attest to the resiliency of the human spirit, and the kindness and the generosity of our hearts:

+ Holiday lights are being put up again, to give people good cheer, all over the United States

+ The TOMS shoe company has set up a crisis center for people to talk to crisis counselors confidentially, free of charge (text 741741, for more information)

+ On my Nextdoor app (neighborhood social media), someone said “Thank you!” to whoever paid for their hot dog meal at our local Costco. The clerk said that a person had paid for several people’s upcoming meals, who were behind them in line.

+And if you need a laugh, this video had me rolling on the floor laughing:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1241339963704250368

Just hang on, everyone!! We’re going to pull through this, together. Life is meant to be lived. This is just a pause.

Fortune for the Day – “When things are steep, remember to stay level headed.” – Horace (I seriously just pick these out of a little bag, without looking. The Universe knows what its doing.)