Image by ~Aphrodite via Flickr
Have you ever experienced extreme joy? A time when you felt like you are glowing and it seemed as if nothing could bring you down?
On the other hand, have ever experienced extreme despair? Utter sadness? A time when life felt pretty hopeless?
As humans we experience that wide range of emotions, including all the shades in between. Through Social Media we are given the opportunity to not only share our emotions, but to share in the emotions of others. Some of you may know these words from the Byrds song, Turn! Turn! Turn!, but they are actually from the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible:
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
This theme carries over further into the Bible in this passage from the New Testament:
Romans 12:15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep
As you navigate your online social spaces, you may find that you are sharing your joys and your sorrows with others. Additionally, though, as you scan through status updates in your news feed, or read the tweets that scroll past your eyes, you may see opportunities to put these words into practice.
When you see your friends rejoicing, feel free to join them! At the birth of a child, a promotion or a new job, or any kind of good news. On the other hand, there are also plenty of times when we see our friends mourning or weeping. Perhaps it’s because of an illness or death. A broken relationship or the loss of a job.
When we see clues online that our friends are struggling, we need to come alongside them and mourn with them.
The ability to empathize is a powerful gift, and now we have even more opportunities to do so as we connect and build relationships with others online, even if we’ve never met them in person.
Have you ever been able to rejoice or weep with someone else, based on what you have seen them say online? Have others rallied around you during times of extreme joy or extreme sadness? Is this something we can put into practice in our businesses, understanding that our empathy and emotions need to be genuine?