My Inner Meanie

I could learn a thing or two from those very kind young women I talked about in the last post. I am not nearly as kind, as nice, as generous as they are.

In fact, I often have very mean thoughts.

For example, I recently read a post on Facebook that was basically a list of things this person had to do before hosting a group of people for Thanksgiving. After mentioning she needed to clean her house, this person went on to say, “But since I just cleaned top to bottom, there’s not much left to do.”

And I instantly thought, “Yeah, you don’t work outside the home, of course you just cleaned top to bottom.”

See, that’s not very nice. I do know that mothers who are home with their children are often very, very busy and that they do, indeed, work, even if they’re not paid for their work.

But the post came across (to my mean brain) as so self-congratulatory that I couldn’t help but sneer a little.

What makes me so mean? Is it envy? Probably a little. But I think that even if I were a stay-at-home mom too, I’d still be a little snarky about a post like that. I’m all for using Facebook as a means to keep people updated on happenings in our lives. That’s what it’s for, right? Heck, I’ve been known to be all braggy about something the girls might have done. But…see, the meanness is coming out again. I have a hard time with the whole, “I’m so good at this and my life is so wonderful and blah blah blah.”

But just because I don’t use social media for that (my blog is obviously proof that I’m not all sunshine and roses even though there are plenty of wonderful things about which I post) it doesn’t mean others shouldn’t. It’s their space.

And yet I’m so mean about it in my own head. Now, I’ll give myself a little credit. I don’t comment on posts like that telling the poster what a jerk I think they are. That would be more than mean, it would be rude. But I also don’t bother ‘liking’ those kinds of posts. I wouldn’t want to encourage the very things that make me the meanest.

Tomorrow I promise to be grateful, to ruminate on all for which I’m thankful. I just needed to get the mean out of my system.