Pardon me while I rant a bit here. I have to say I’m sick of people refusing to claim agency over their lives. The latest dust up of Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter has really been eye opening.

Let me explain. So we have a guy who claims his reasoning for purchasing the ‘public town square’ is to open it up to more free speech. One sort of person loves this idea. More speech equals more discourse. More discourse can lead to a better understanding of truth vs. opinion.

Then there’s the other side. They say people will abuse this freedom. They will use this openness of free speech as a means of free hate. They are of the belief anyone willing to Tweet, say or even think anything they deem as hateful, hurtful or disagreeable is akin to violence and should not be afforded a place at the town square.

At some point we all have to collectively grow up. Stop whining and realize their are hateful, vile and abusive people in this world. Most of them are miserable themselves.

Viktor Frankl once said, ‘When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

This should be a wakeup call to all those wringing their hands about Elon Musk buying Twitter. It’s happening. Free speech is going to be a little freer. You can’t change that. Therefore, you must change yourself. So how does this happen?

Well, first you must stop putting so much power in the hands of others. Take the power for yourself. You and only you get to decide what is hurtful and harmful not some stranger on Twitter. This goes for both left and right. If someone you don’t know out in the ether of the Twitter-verse Tweets, ‘Trans lizard non binary lizard mother dad of three’ has rights, too’ you should be able to shrug it off.

Why should you care? If you just go, ‘meh’ and move on not a sound is made. It’s like the age old question, ‘If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?’ The answer of course is yes. However, with nobody to pick up the sound it is of no consequence.

It’s the same here. If a Tweet falls into the web and no one responds, does it make a sound? Not really. At best it only makes as much sound as the responders give it. A Tweet in and of itself is just letters arranged on a PDA awaiting someone to give it meaning.

We must take agency for our lives. The society we seem to be constructing is made of victims, wilting flowers and easily triggered humans. This is not good. Reality just doesn’t care about our feelings.

Like Don Draper once told the beatnik on Mad Men, ‘The universe is indifferent.’

You and your family’s views of you are what matters most. Define standards for yourself and either abide by them or don’t. They are yours. If others don’t abide, fine, move on. Words only have meaning which you assign to them.

One of my favorite teachings on this matter comes from the Buddha.

Buddha was passing through a village and the people came and they insulted him.  They used all the four-letter words that they knew.  Buddha stood there, listened silently, very attentively, and then said, ‘Thank you for coming to me, but I am in a hurry.  I have to reach the next village, people will be waiting for me there.  I cannot devote more time to you today, but tomorrow coming back I will have more time.  You can gather again, and tomorrow if something is left that you wanted to say and have not been able to, you can say it.  But today, please excuse me.’  

Those people could not believe their ears: this man has remained utterly unaffected, undistracted.  One of them asked, ‘Have you not heard us?  We have been abusing you like anything, and you have not even answered!’

Buddha said, ‘If you wanted an answer, then you have come too late.  You should have come ten years ago, then I would have answered you.  But for these ten years I have stopped being manipulated by others.  I am no longer a slave, I am my own master.  I act according to myself, not according to anybody else.  I act according to my inner need.  You cannot force me to do anything.  It’s perfectly good: you wanted to abuse me, you abused me!   Feel fulfilled.  You have done your work perfectly well.  But as far as I am concerned, I don’t take your insults, and unless I take them, they are meaningless.’

Happy Tweeting!

If you are going to walk through the digital town square of Twitter-ville, decide what messages you will give weight to and those you will not. Only YOU can decide. You get to decide if the Tweet makes a sound in the woods or not.