Wow. There has been a lot of good insight here today. I think that some have found points of agreement where there didn't appear to be many before.

I have not posted much in this thread, but I have been talking to various members behind the scenes. I hope that nobody minds if I share something that has shown itself to me as a common denominator. It fits perfectly with the topic of the thread itself too, and maybe that is why feelings have been so strong. People have indeed felt judged, and it isn't being judged that hurts so much as the feeling of being wrongly judged. Sometimes we think that we know what someone's intention was, and we assume that they wanted to hurt us. Wow, I felt something with that because I do that IRL all the time - and it never works out very well for me. But we can't know what someone else's intentions are, no matter what it looks like to us. Let's try to all give each other the benefit of the doubt on that score, shall we?

I believe that almost everyone has good intentions. Actions may be misguided, and it might not come out the way you want it to, but we don't set out to see how many people we can hurt today. Have you all seen the last Star Wars movie? Darth Vader did terrible things, and that was what made him who he turned out to be - the fearsome dark lord of the Sith. What made it tragic was that Anikin Skywalker was a good person and was motivated by love, or his understanding of it. The thing that he wanted most was to save the woman he loved from death. In his passion, he killed the innocents and his beloved wife too. But he didn't intend to do that. His friends tried to tell him, but he was under the influence of a powerful and charismatic leader and he wouldn't listen. How many of you would like to be Anikin's final judge? I know that I would not.

When people post here, there is always more to the story than we know. Someone's posting style might rub you the wrong way. Someone might tell you that your posting style is problematic. They might not put it in such nice terms. There are two things that we can learn from this that we can apply to our participation here. The first thing is to try to look beyond your first perception and see what is really motivating the post (an attempt to communicate what feels true to that person, or a need to be understood maybe). The second is to look at the feedback that we get with an open mind. If a lot of people tell you something about your posts, and what they are seeing is not what you intend to communicate, then it is time to try to figure out what looks to them like what they are seeing. Then you can work on saying what you really intend in a way that more people can understand. I am saying this here because it applies to everyone, and is another common denominator.

TC All,
Love,
Rap