Tag Archives: point of view

Perspective

October has passed really fast. Faster than I think I’ve experienced it passing in years. In a blink of an eye, I feel like we’ve gone from warm weather and lake-days to brilliant leaves and cold rain. Halloween approaches, and the question, “What are you doing for the holidays?” is a common conversation starter.

Fall photosLast week, though, was one that brought around a lot of perspective in many ways. It all really started with handling an issue in a closed group I help admin on Facebook. For the first time, outside of approving memberships, I had to put on my admin hat and kick out a member… and deal with the aftermath of the drama that occurred. I don’t like drama, and I often say that I don’t handle it well. However, through the course of the issue, I learned that I CAN handle drama, and that sometimes the only answer you can give is a strong and final, “NO.”

Not long after, I got word of an extended family member’s death. It wasn’t a family member I was close to at all — in fact according to my Mom I probably had not seen this person since I was in high school — but I still felt this distinct pang of sorrow over the loss. Gone too young, I ached to hug his family members, and I wished I could take their pain away. Life is short… make the most of every day you have. Hold on to your loved ones, and tell them you care as often as you can. You never know when it might be your last chance.

Saturday brought about the Oklahoma State University homecoming, and the horrible accident that occurred at their homecoming parade. Suddenly the fact that football does not trump life was brought to light. Win or lose, there were people who would never get to hug their loved ones again. There were others who lay in a hospital in critical condition. All these lives changed in the blink of an eye… the outcome of the football game they were excited about no longer mattered.   

That all being said, football does matter a lot of many people. Saturday night was a difficult for Aggies, as we watched our team implode on itself.  Even as we took a moment to reflect on the tragedy at OSU, it was hard to not feel that sting of loss.

The next day, when I got dressed to go out, I didn’t hesitate to grab one of my Texas A&M hoodies. I remembered a tweet I shared a few years prior (thanks to Timehop I had just recently read it again), in which after the Aggies had lost, someone asked a fellow Aggie if they were embarrassed to wear an A&M shirt on Monday. “Never, sir,” they had replied.

2015-10-25 16.31.46

We get hung up on football records, and so many deem a university “good” or “bad” based on their football season. But I didn’t go to Texas A&M for football. I went for everything else. A good education, the Aggie family, and core sense of values that the school instilled into me. It’s those lessons and the Aggie community that I lean on heavily in my daily life… its why I am passionate about being and honored to be an Aggie. And that doesn’t change whether my team has a losing season or are ranked top of the charts.

So, you know, life is all about perspective. I can look at October coming to an end as a bummer that the year is going by too fast, or I can embrace it as time marching forward towards the next big thing in life… whatever that may or may not be.

 

Slanted

When I was studying journalism, I can clearly remember being quite amused by how easy it was to slant a story to say pretty much whatever I wanted it to say. Fast forward to today and that slanting of a story just frustrates me, because it is so rampant in today’s media in general.

I’m proud of the fact that I have a journalism degree. But I’m often ashamed of the field these days.

I can vaguely remember in high school being told at some point that the press was often considered the fourth branch of government.  You have the judicial branch. You have the executive branch. You have the legislative branch. But you also have the press, who is there to hold the other three accountable — who is there to keep the government’s actions transparent to the American people. And while I never was interested in covering government or political issues, I still took that angle of the journalism field very seriously. I still saw that job of the press as being a very noble and important function. Frankly, I still do.

I would describe myself politically is pretty much right down the middle. A friend of mine often says she’s a little left of center. I respond that I’m a little right of center. I think that’s part of what makes us good friends, because we see eye to eye on a lot but respectfully disagree on others.

We respectfully disagree. Remember that.

Perhaps my being more middle of the road is a big part of why I like journalism. I want facts. I like to get down to the bottom of the story. I want to know the who, what, where, when, why and how. People have been known to point out that there seems to be no end to my ability to find stuff out.

I don’t much like opinions, though. They leave me bound up and stressed out. ESPECIALLY in the political world. I don’t want the right attacking the left. I don’t want the left attacking the right. I want the facts about what is happening today. I want people to realize that I’m smart enough to make my own decisions.

I have friends from both ends of the political spectrum. I have strong opinionated liberals I consider dear friends. In the exact same breath I have very strong staunch conservatives that I also consider dear friends. I don’t think either one is wrong. I think this world is big enough for both sides. I just wish we all could acknowledge that we aren’t going to agree on a lot of things. If we could just respectfully disagree.

It’s hard to wade through the slanted media articles to get to the bottom of the story these days.  So-and-so said this. So-and-so did that. He took my doll. She called me a bad name. This woman is an idiot. This guy thinks he knows it all. Between left and right, black and white, male and female, north and south, Christians and atheists… We’re so divided these days it hurts my heart. We can’t seem to respectfully disagree anymore. The stance is all too often, “If you don’t agree with me, you are against me.”

Journalism is feeding that discontent day in and day out.

Discontent sells. Discontent gets more clicks. Sometimes I feel like watching the news or reading it online is like driving down the interstate and coming up on an accident.

The accident isn’t it in your lanes. It’s not even on your side of the interstate. But traffic is going to come to a crawl, as we all turn and rubberneck, searching for someone to blame for this distress.

Searching for someone to blame for our distress. Isn’t that what we’re always doing? Meanwhile we are so busy looking at the accident on the other side of the interstate, we’ve missed the fact that we’re about to cause another accident on our side.

You can apply this same principle to our political leanings.  We’re so busy pointing fingers at the other side, we’re not looking closely at what we’re doing on our own side. We’re so busy butting heads that we don’t see what we actually agree on anymore. We no longer seem to ever respectfully disagree.

And I’ll be honest, I blame the media for a lot of this. Because discontent does sell. People often aren’t mad about something until they’re told they’re supposed to be mad about it. Maybe if people got strictly the facts. Maybe if people got both sides of a story. Maybe they’d have to make their own decisions. And, within that, maybe we’d all find ourselves a little more understanding and tolerant of each other.

Maybe.