For "You"

It's a strange age we live in - the age where we can communicate through a solely virtual world. All the people that speak to one another through the computer and ONLY the computer. Instead of a handshake or hug, we get a virtual "poke", instead of a smile from a beautiful face - eyes sparkling, fine lines and wrinkles emerging from around our lips and the corners of the eyes, we get a colon and parenthesis. Our walls are down, because our screens are up, and we get to decide how people will see us, because we can backspace, delete, pause and wikipedia our speech. Like a piece of clay, we mold, re-mold, and re-shape our image until it is up to our standards of the "us" we want the virtual world to see.

I'm sure we all twist our worlds a little from time to time, trying to make our day seem more interesting, double-checking our spelling so we don't present ourselves as less knowledgeable as we'd like to believe to be, copying and pasting, cropping, editing, photoshopping and more. But sometimes I think (some more than others) we take advantage of the ability to edit ourselves. When we paint ourselves as the victim, we need to step away from typing about the wrongs which have been bestowed upon us hoping to gain sympathy, and instead we need to lift our hands off the keys, and face no one but ourselves, to learn - and accept - that sometimes, it's our own fault. Sometimes, we aren't trying hard enough. Sometimes, it was us that made the mistake. Sometimes, we fail, and sometimes from these failures, we hurt people we care about.

Sometimes we need to step away from our computers, and fix ourselves - without witnesses. Learn true humility - without documenting every step. Learn to truly cope - without waiting for a comment to say you've done it the right way. Learn to truly try. Learn that it's okay to mess up, and it's okay to not let everyone know what's happening in every second of your life. Learn to stop blaming someone else for something that you can take control of. Stop painting someone else as the bad guy, and learn that sometimes the bad guy is you. Learn that all the online comments in the world will not turn a lie into a truth.