The words still haunt me: “Remember, everything you do will ripple through everyone else’s hard drive. It may take some time, but whatever changes you make will impact everyone else on the team.” And I then thought—just like all of life.
I was trying to share documents with a team member and finally was frustrated enough to ask for help. Our CTO, with a wry smile, told me I was making it harder than I needed to. Fifteen minutes and a tutorial later, I had unleashed the power of a shared workspace: any changes to documents made on my hard drive also appeared on the documents of anyone who had synced the same document to their hard drive or the cloud.
Many years ago, as I was sorting through upsets in my marriage, I was advised that I had more power than I thought. The counsellor invited me to think of marriage as a dance. And, as either partner changed the steps, the other person had to change in response. The key to personal and interpersonal growth was being willing to change the step—and live with the disquiet while the other person changed in response.
We think of ourselves as solo dancers, or to return to the beginning metaphor, independent documents on our own hard drive of life. But we are not. We live in community and on a planet where all are interconnected. My good mood—or bad mood—impacts everyone I interact with—everyone who accesses the same drive. The words and pictures I put out into common space have a life of their own and I have no idea where those ideas or images will land.
The world of social media is a souped-up shared drive on a global scale. Many bemoan those who throw gasoline on the fire of discontent by the posts and memes indiscriminately reposted in cyberspace. We forget people had grievances before the internet. Men gathered over beer at the local watering hole and women convened over coffee to share the petty resentments of their lives and rail against all “those” out there. After the upsets were defused, people would go home—the trifling concerns resolved.
While the ability to put content into the internet without responsibility for the consequences has been increasing over the past few years, with social distancing and hibernating to avoid COVID-19, those opportunities to complain about life to a small circle of trusted friends who will soothe us are even fewer. Instead, we increasingly spew our delights and outrages into the ether—and forget that those celebrations of life and rantings are rippling through our connected systems.
Ethics is about how we treat ourselves and others. We tend to think of ethics in terms of actions, but our ethics also show up in our words. As we begin this new year, a productive resolution would be to really consider how we live out our beliefs, values, traditions, and behaviors impacts the lives of those around us. Every ethical theory teaches that the path to ethical maturity involves considering others. We are encouraged to ensure that our words, attitudes, and actions are infused with love. Being mindful of what changes we’re making on our hard drive, changes that will ripple throughout our community, requires pausing, reflecting, and then consciously choosing to act from kindness rather than pettiness before we press “save.” That project should keep us all busy for a year. Here’s to 2021!