How Does That Make You Feel?

What makes you decide to share something in real life, or on social media? What’s worth someone else’s attention?

If you want others to see a sticker on your car, you have maybe 30 seconds at a red light if they didn’t pick up their phone first, and less than a second if we’re talking about social media. How do you choose?

We’ve all seen someone make a peevish post about how they are nice, but other people aren’t. For me it’s usually in a cycling group. Someone is unhappy because they waved on the trail or road, people don’t always wave back and they’ve taken it personally. The standard comments usually get around to the transactional nature of a greeting given with the expectation of something in return.

On the surface, the back window sticker on the minivan in the pic below seems tough, direct, uncompromising. “Just the facts Ma’am.” It may have even felt righteous to the person who put it on their car. What ever their feelings, the irony that feelings of some sort were actually the motivation for placing the sticker isn’t lost.

This sticker could cause a pedantic tailspin, but I’ll just say that what I received when I read it was more negative than positive. Facts do matter, a lot, and so it has truthiness, but so do feelings. It seems to want to enlighten, but doesn’t. It seems to want a specific reaction. Would that reaction, if given, improve anything? It makes me disagree a little rather than wanting to high-five someone.

Shortly afterward, I saw the stickers on the truck below. I’ve considered putting that larger sentiment on my t-shirts, so I definitely like that. Yes, I’m a Ted Lasso fan and I think that Black Panther is the best movie Disney has produced in decades. Give me those good vibes and I’ll hum in synchronicity like a tuning fork.

That smaller sticker says “Act Right . Ever Forward . Bring everyone with you.” Now, there’s an idea. What would happen if people really felt that and acted on it? It made me want to know more about the person in this truck.

I searched to see if I could find where this nicely compact comment came from. I only found it in one place, the tag line of a local musician on his Facebook page. Is he the driver of this truck? I don’t know, but kudos to anyone living this idea, and especially for bringing me with them.

Then there was the sharpie message on the public restroom hand dryer. The sticker is good too. Maybe they even used something other than a tree to produce it ;).

Russ and I had recently been at odds when I saw this. We each thought the other was being unreasonably grumpy, but it wasn’t world shattering stuff. I’ve had the serendipity to see messages like this when I was really down, though. I appreciate that someone wants to reach out to anyone feeling the weight of the world. It wasn’t 24 hours before I sent this pic to someone whose life was in the toilet (bathroom humor intended). I don’t know if it landed well. At the very least, they knew I care.

I’ve put 3 stickers on my own car. One was a small turtle bought to remind me I had a great vacation seeing baby turtles emerge and kayaking in bioluminescence with Russ and my grandson. It eventually disappeared in a car wash. I have “May the forest be with you” almost hidden on the frame of the hitch receiver for my bike rack. I recently added a back seat window sasquatch with the name of my childhood hometown on it. It’s the official Bigfoot Capitol of Alabama. Yes, that’s what I said*. Sometimes you just have to celebrate the quirks in your life, and it helps me find my car.

So, I’m not expecting any desired response with my own car stickers. I’m not making world changing waves either. I guess that’s ok. Being self-contained is fine.

The feelings link above mentions how sharing things, those that one expects other people to see, is about how it makes the sharer feel, but the things we share keep on giving as others see the message repeatedly. It kind of makes the dear reader more important. What’s worth that much bandwidth?

For my next sticker, I’d like to go the Socrates triple filter route. “Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?” (this is widely, but maybe not be accurately attributed to Socrates). There’s also the T H I N K acronym (which seems to be everywhere, but without original sources). It goes: T – Is what I’m saying True? H – Is it Helpful? I – Is it Inspiring? N – Is it Necessary? K – Is it Kind? And, this version from the Buddhist tradition brings timing and how difficult something may be to hear into the equation. All are good, especially all together.

I think I’d like to put something positive up when I find or create the right thing. It will be a small challenge. People are conditioned to get triggered over innocent things. I think I’ll be focused around my own version of the “Ever Forward” sticker above. I want to share something helpful and positive, but not in a transactional way. The win/win for me is when how it makes me feel is unequivocally linked to how it makes others feel. It’s a positive 1:1 correlation. The better others feel about something I’ve put out there, the more likely it is to do good and better I feel about having shared. Anyone who wants to come with me is welcome. No expectations.

Have a glorious day, and we’ll see you on the trail!

*About that Bigfoot video link. No, I don’t remember local Bigfoot stories from my childhood. I didn’t watch the whole video. In what I did see, there are illustrative scenes not from Evergreen, like the snow pictures and some landscapes. Snow is rare down there, and there are actors, not locals illustrating some of the narration.

I have attended both the Collard Green and Conecuh Sausage Festivals, I didn’t know there was a Bigfoot calling competition. I’ll have to make sure I see that this year! I do have a picture of Russ posing with the Bigfoot statue out by the interstate and I got my sticker at that newer, bigger Conecuh Sausage Store they were talking about building across the street. They have the best roller sausage in the state ready all the time, great sausage breakfast choices, organic grits for home cooking and a bunch of the kinds of stuff you would see in the shop at a Cracker Barrel. They’re closed on Sunday. I keep forgetting that and thinking I’ll drop by on the way out of town.