#stressdrilon

Election season has made me realize how unhappy I am with Facebook.  I’ve hidden so many of my friends and family from my feed because the piss and vitriol they’ve exhibited is very stressful for me to read.

Not that my hands are clean.  I’ve contributed my fair share to the political noise.  But I stopped posting towards the past few weeks.

I’m an empath.  I pick up easily on what people are feeling and it’s not easy for me to filter it off.  I get very affected by their emotions.  But my friends and family have a right to express what they feel.

But imagine, if you will, walking through a neighborhood where everybody is shoving a campaign poster into your face.  In every corner you turn, a politician’s jingle is playing in your ear.  In every face you meet, you encounter outrage, righteous indignation and judgment of one another.

That’s what Facebook has been like in the past few weeks, and it’s made me miserable.  Facebook was somewhere I can run to for distraction and to catch up with my friends.  Now it’s just an endless slew of people trying to out-argue with each other, often using sources and arguments which makes one question the other’s level of educational attainment.

Re-following all those people after the elections is not a happy option either because doing so will make all their posts pop out on my notifications button.

I’m seriously contemplating quitting Facebook altogether.  The only thing keeping me from it is that it is where majority of the people I know post updates on their lives and what are on their thoughts.  It would be sad to cut myself off from that.

There’s a war going on, and most people don’t realize it.  It has nothing to do with political ideology.

It’s a war on whether we feed the beasts of our hatred or the better nature of our kind selves.