Last Thursday I landed in Denver after a one month trip to Vietnam. It was one of those remarkable journeys full of discoveries and learning, surprising insights and flashes of empathy from places you can’t anticipate. Like the day I was hiking through a particularly tough bit of primitive Central Vietnamese jungle during a wet, cold day, stuck in the mud, struggling with creepers, whacking my head on fallen trees. In that moment it suddenly dawned on me that these – and far, far worse- were some of the conditions that my fellow veterans had to deal with forty years ago during the war. Along with booby traps and jungle rot and so very much more. But the fleeting insight into that world was priceless. I was hiking back to a hostel. They didn’t. Most of us won’t see that jungle up close and personal, and for me it was a paid adventure. I’m a Vietnam-era vet, never been there before.
The warm welcome I received, the kindness, their laughter at my attempts to speak their language, well, let’s just say it was a cathartic experience.
While I travel I write on various forums. My style is to find the funniest things that happen and relay them along with observations about the country and its beauty.
It happened that on one occasion I had paid for an excursion which required that I give up the use of my own gear and use the company’s equipment, which was not very good, and that, along with very cold water and mud, caused me to take some pretty good falls. We crossed about eighteen streams both coming and going. By the time all was said and done, I’d thrown my back out twice and fallen on my knees on some nasty rocks three times, using shoes that had no tread and that were a size too big. My shoes are excellent hikers, good gear in any condition. I hadn’t expected so many stream crossings, and I should have asked about it beforehand, because I have gear up to the task. Good head’s up for next time.
The couple who were along on this trip were impatient when I couldn’t keep up with the very fast pace set by our guide and their kindness turned to condescension as they increasingly got tired of having to wait for me to catch up. The next day they left early. The guide, whose job it is to keep the group together, didn’t argue. This had consequences for us all. At 2:30, right on the nose when we were supposed to get our ride, my guide, two porters and I came out of the jungle onto the road, which was totally empty- no ride. The couple had taken it. It was cold, windy, wet, no cell signal, and a five hour trek back to town. We started hiking back.
When I did get back to town about two and a half hours later (a van finally did pick us up) I had found my funny again. I wrote my version of the story. I didn’t make a big deal of the dangers of being left in the middle of nowhere without adequate supplies or much else. But I had been angry. So I had a little fun at the expense of the other couple. Who ended up reading my post.
The woman’s response was probably the most bilious, angry, vicious character assassination I’ve ever read. It also went a long way towards proving every point I’d made in the post. She also pointed out that I’d have it removed. Of course not. The post was so extreme it was funny in its own right. However there were some good lessons to come of it.
The reason is three fold. It was an excellent reminder that those posts are public, and if I’m of a mind to poke fun, I need to be uber careful about how I do it. It’s fine if I do it to myself. But not to others. I did apologize. And I took the lesson to heart.
Second, if someone wants to put bile online, it speaks far more about their character than it does about their target’s. There are ways to disagree, ways to take issue, and ways to take someone to task. There are as many versions of a story as there are people involved including the butler. No right or wrong.
Third, it is a lesson in how important it is to sit on your words before you publish them. This is like that angry email you write and should hold off on for 24 hours until you cool off. Had I taken a day to cool off about being abandoned by the roadside in the rain, the post would have read differently. By the same token, had she sat on her response for a day, she might have seen the contradictions in her angry claims.
Once we hit “publish” there’s no going back. Public forums can be entertaining and they can also be highly revealing in ways we really don’t care for them to be. Toxic WordFood has no place in social media. And I am most grateful for this excellent reminder.