It's because of you...

 

So I have to make a couple final comments on the recent incident where the very character of who I am as a person was attacked on a local TV station’s Facebook page. No, I am not dwelling on it or ruminating over it, I am thinking of you. What I mean by this is that for a day or a little longer I went to a very dark place. I questioned us—humans—in general. I could not see the light in us, and that scared the hell out of me. But I’m jumping ahead as I sometimes do, I’ll back up a bit.

There are three primary social media pages to which I post: my personal Facebook page, the Urban Simplicity Facebook page, and my Instagram page (@pazbici). Well, when I wrote a short piece about the incident and how I processed it and then posted it to the three places I soon became overwhelmed (in a good way), one might even say verklempt (Yiddish, overcome with emotion).

The three pages quite literally lit up with support. More than a thousand likes, and hundreds of comments. There were also texts, messages, emails, phone calls, and hugs in real life.

In the same way that one may cherry-pick negative bible passages for control or oppression, I do the same but look for those that are positive and affirming. I have my favorites and one of them is John 1:5 “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” This of course is making reference to the Christ, but I believe that each of us has a spark of this divinity within. What scared me is that during that short but very dark period I could not see it. That’s where you come in. You let your light shine. Your light shone in my darkness and helped me see it again.

So many of you reached out, so many of you told me how much I was loved. But you forgot to look in the mirror. For it was you whose lights shone forth and allowed me to see again. And for that I am incredibly thankful.

It’s often said how incredibly negative social media is—especially Facebook—but I have often argued that there is also good, and you proved that.

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