Influence.

The blog post that precedes this, I posted on Facebook. I'm not sure yet if this is a mistake or not.

Immediately upon posting, it elicited a flood of comments from friends: at first, a pile of positive comments agreeing with me, but then after that, a comment that attempted to reword my original post (at the same time passing harsh judgment on the girl I mentioned in my blog, whom the person commenting knew), and then blatant disagreement, followed by a text message from a friend who's disappointed in me, and another person messaging me asking me if I think that EBC is a bad place, because I had mentioned the school in my post. Then someone encouraging me to look into Buddhism, surprisingly enough...

Now I'm at an interesting point. One friend that I work with immediately messaged me and told me to put a filter on my public notes, because I work at a youth group with kids, and I had to remember the nature of influence, and how powerful it is, and how easily one's words can be misinterpreted, and how easily kids can manipulate the intended message and come to wrong conclusions. There was an individual I knew who was working with a youth group and thus in a very influential position in many young people's lives. This person made a personal decision that had the potential to sever that influence, but then the person made the mistake of publicly posting pictures on Facebook that... (to word it nicely) suggested things that those young people should not do, immediately either severing the influence, and/or having a negative and harmful affect upon that influence.

I didn't intend to post controversy (well, I wanted to be a bit controversial, yes...), or anything that warrants a filter having to be placed so that impressionable people won't get a negative impression. I'm tempted to delete the note, but at the same time, I feel that I have a need to stand with my convictions. That particular note took almost a month to compose, and I read over it multiple times when I posted. I was expecting disagreement, and a degree of misinterpretation, because that's the nature of these things, but not to this degree...

With this in mind, I do not know if I should delete the post, or keep it up. If I should be more mindful of my influence (which I'd like to think I keep an eye on on a consistent basis, whether through the way I dress, things I say, and my actions, etc.) or if I'm in a safe place with this post. I also wonder to what degree I owe my writing, if I leave it up to the misinterpreted scrutiny of the world, or if I take it down, refashion it, maybe sugarcoat my words, and post it up so people will like it better. But then I look at the people who applauded my post, and many of those people are influential people in my life, who's opinion I highly value. In the same breath the people who were critical are also influential people.

I have a feeling though, that for my convictions, for what I want to do and challenge, this is an opposition I will have to get used to facing. Better sooner than later I guess, however, I do NOT NOT NOT like it when people misinterpret my thoughts.

I resolved it by placing a disclaimer on the end of my post. But I still don't know if what I did was right, or if I should still take the safe route and delete it.