via Daily Prompt: Detonate

Yesterday I wrote a post about being someone who always instinctively wants to help people. I call it the ‘servant gene‘.

Someone left the following comment on my post:

I had to read it several times to be sure it was saying what I thought it was saying. Is it just me or is this person accusing me of bragging about having a servant gene and that I think I’m better than everyone else because of it?

It upset me. A lot. Because one of the key things about those with a very active servant gene is that they never think they’re superior to anyone.

I started going over my post. Was it braggy? Did I sound like I was making out I was better than other people? Admittedly, I’d ended with the comment that those with servant genes are an important part of the community but it had actually taken a lot of effort to include that. If it sounded like I was putting myself above other people, I hadn’t meant it.

I’d never seen this person on my blog before so I clicked through to their blog to try and understand where they were coming from. There was nothing there. It’s a nothing blog. They just have a profile.

So this person just came by and threw a grenade at my house before driving away.

What is it with these people?

You see it too often these days on Facebook posts and online newspaper articles and the like. People say whatever they want, often inflammatory, and then disappear. Drop a nasty bomb and take cover.

If I had presented what was in my blog post as a speech somewhere, I’d be willing to bet that person would never have come up to me afterwards and made that comment to my face.

I just wish people would have a little common decency and stop detonating bombs wherever they feel like it. Not all of us are bulletproof.

Postscript: Amazingly, I’d already considered writing a follow up post about how much this comment had upset me and then the Daily Prompt landed in my inbox. It seemed meant to be.

Post-postscript: I feel better now. 😉