A Calm Heart

February 2020 marked the seventh anniversary of my Open Heart Surgery.  In many ways, I am more laid-back about things now than I was before.  I realised that I have to be.  This heart of mine needs to be looked after, and not just physically.  Of course I need to take care of it by exercising (building its strength) and relaxing (reducing its stress), but it needs much more than that.  During this time of world-wide pandemic and social unrest in America, I believe that God is teaching me many life lessons. One of them being; look after your heart spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically as well.  There are many ways of doing this: a relationship with God, reading good books and articles, I am learning the importance of music, developing meaningful friendships etc.  One area where this can be extremely difficult is the area of facebook and social media.

I am a regular facebook-user but have a love-hate relationship with it.  There are days when I rue the day I ever accepted that first friendship invitation and others when I love the community of it.  Over the years there are some "friends", pages etc that I have deleted, those that are not good for the heart or soul.  Some, with whom I have no other connection other than facebook, were easy to delete but others where there is some kind of relationship were more difficult.  I have discovered the unfollow button, which means I can still be "friends" but their posts do not have to appear on what I see.   Still some of what I read, I have come to the conclusion, is not good for my heart/soul health.  I am getting fed-up with the supposed depth of some of it; the post and run as I like to call it.  I get annoyed by what is posted and would love to have great conversations about it.  However, I  know that having a proper relationship with people is essential to real dialogue, and this is not always possible through the forum of facebook (or other social media platforms).    I have been blessed with finding out some great information over the past few weeks about things of great importance (eg, why Black Lives Matters etc) but am still astounded by the triviality of facebook. I am learning that I need to treat facebook as it is: a place where I can connect on one level.  I can find out about your thoughts etc but it must not substitute real friendship.  

I know that taking facebook less seriously will not solve everything but will help maintain and build the calmness of my heart (both ethereal and physical), so that I can work on those friendships that I have outside the world of facebook and other social media.