As we approach the dawning of the 14th year in the new century, I pause and look around at the changes around the world.
Not only has global warming changed the climate on the earth, but we've been at war for years, we've endured countless tragedies from 9-1-1 to an increase in school shootings, and other criminal activities that would have boggled our minds just 20 years ago.
This past Black Friday brought more violence than we've seen in previous years. A man was crushed and killed at a Walmart in New York from a surge of customers anxious to get inside the store and buy whatever items were drastically marked down.
The news that day was filled with chilling stories from around the country noting people fighting each other over a hot deal. From shootings to stampedes, the scenario describes one of greed and lust for objects and the total disregard of human life.
It's a sad state of affairs when a great deal at a store turns people into raving lunatics. This is supposed to be a season of love, joy and preparation to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.
I was in retail in the early years of my working life and Black Friday was always busy but never the shopping frenzy it has become.
As we progress toward December 24, the last shopping day before Christmas, we will find angrier drivers on the roads, exhausted and cranky store clerks and more people anxious to simply have the holiday over and done with.
Where has the reason for the season gone?
It's disappeared into a land of greed for the next best deal, owning a bigger and better TV, Xbox, iPad or toy. It's all about placing bigger and nicer gifts under the tree and satisfying our loved one's wish list.
Still, this awful frenzy of the holiday season is not the sole time of year in which people's personalities have changed.
No ... it lasts the whole year through. Try commuting from a small town to a large city and experience the angry, aggressive drivers surrounding you. Put anyone behind the wheel of one- to two-ton vehicle and the most laid back person can become a predator intent on being the first in line, maneuvering in and out of traffic like they are driving in the Indy 500.
It's been 148 years since the Civil War ended and yet we've found ourselves embroiled in another kind of civil war. This one pits one person against another for no political reason, but because they feel empowered to bully one-another.
Social media on the Internet has unleashed a whole new era of bullying, taking what I experienced as a 7-year-old preacher's kid in the 1960s to a new level of pushing and shoving by the click of a computer button.
Cyber bullying has grown so large that youth are killing themselves over the taunts of classmates intent on hurting someone else.
When I was a kid I was called names, not welcomed into the entire neighborhood's clique, and sometimes beaten. Thirty years later when my son was young - in the 1990s - bullying had escalated to sexual assaults and threats of death. Now, 15 years later, cyber bullying, whether by text message or social media, is at epidemic proportions.
We are bullied in the workplace, on the street, in our schools, while shopping. Even a person with a shopping cart in a big box store can push and shove his/her way down an aisle in an attempt to intimidate.
People have become mean and nasty to each other.
I joined Facebook in 2009 and was thrilled to find distant family members, old high school classmates and former co-workers with whom I was reunited. I rejoiced in being able to follow what family members were doing, especially where we lived thousands of miles away.
I saw classmates and their grandchildren and found people whom I had not seen in 30-40 years.
In these past four years, however, most specifically – this past year – I have witnessed and been the target of cyber bullies on Facebook.
On one site dedicated to a place I lived for 14 years, one man attacked dozens of people on threads that had nothing to do with his attacks on them. It took months for the administrator to kick the fellow off the site, but already the damage was done.
I myself was attacked a few months ago by several old acquaintances whose political views are different than mine when I simply posted a statement about a local restaurant where the waitress informed us the entire company had gone part time in an effort to keep costs down as Obama's new healthcare plan was about to unfold.
I merely posted the reason why the service at the restaurant had declined and was rewarded by some heinous comments by people I considered old friends for my close-minded views on our president. In fact, I had simply repeated what our waitress said.
A few days ago I posted a small status about the four-day Thanksgiving weekend, something to the extent of: "what a weekend ... we were sick on Thanksgiving, people died on Black Friday, Paul Walker died in a fiery crash on Saturday and Sunday brought deaths from a train derailment in New York. People seem to have forgotten the reason for the season and the meanness exerts itself now that we're in the shopping season."
In a shocking surprise to me, I was verbally attacked by a family member who turned his back on the family a few months ago. It wasn't the worst I received from him, for he took it to private text messages, 11 of them the next day.
And he didn't even read my post the way it was written! I never said the entire world was down and lost, but you have to be living under a rock to not witness the mean, rude people that walk among us during this time of year.
For a 24 hour period I was bullied in public and in private for quite simply stating my point of view on my own Facebook page.
While a person hides behind a computer screen or cell phone, they may feel it is a cloak of darkness in which they can't be seen and they feel safe to hurt and torment another human being.
It goes on everywhere, on every social media and in every walk of life.
This year I've discovered the glorious advantage of the ability to block someone on Facebook and block someone from sending me messages on my phone. Victims of bullying should take advantage of this option. Rid yourself of the negativity coming at you.
We don't deserve to be bullied, whether on social media, our cell phones, at work, in a store or on the roadway.
The old childhood chant, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me," no longer exists.
Words do hurt. They taunt and torment and sometimes they kill.
As we proceed through this season of great joy and love in the celebration of Christ our savior, please remember, whether you are a Christian or worship in another manor - the words that Christ imparted were ones of peace, friendship and love – that message is universal and transcends every religion and belief in the world.
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