Monday 28 October 2013

The Kindness of Strangers

Yesterday our boiler went bang. It flooded out kitchen and dining room. It was scary and stressful. 


But within minutes I had tweets of support and care from strangers. People who I haven't met. People whose blogs I read. People who might read my blog. 


The kindness of strangers meant a great deal to me, in the middle of a really stressful situation I had people reaching out and sympathising. 

People wishing us a speedy recovery of services and our home. Our new home. 

 
People who followed the story and checked back in with us later in the day.

Social media these days comes in for a lot of criticisms. But. It can be brilliant. It is a medium in which we can share. We share our thoughts, our feelings, our photographs of our nearest and dearest. We are allowed to share. It is the reason most of us signed up to these sites in the first place. To share. We have a way of reaching out and being reached. 

But I do sometimes also find that the over share gets to me. At no time before have we been so acutely aware of what our friends are doing, saying or liking. And most of the time it isn't anything to do with your story together. This is when you have to use your filters. Your self selecting filters of what you read and what you don't.

Yesterday the kindness of strangers was magic to me. Because of social media I had a way of sharing a horrible event and a way of being supported. Even by strangers. 

Thank you.

9 comments:

  1. That's so lovely - the kindness of strangers can be a very pleasant surprise. Hope you got the boiler sorted quickly, and are over the shock of it all. I totally agree with what you've said about 'self selecting filters', great way of summing it up! #MagicMoments

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    1. Thank you :-)

      Everything crossed the boiler man can fix it. I smell! We are recovered. It is a bit like labour, now it's over I can't clearly remember what happened.

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  2. Really nice to hear something positive being said about social media; it can be a wonderful thing if used in the right way. Glad you got some support and hope you're getting sorted (Distressed Housewife) x

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    1. Yes I think it can be. I have moved away from Facebook and prefer twitter and Instagram because you can't see peoples every move in the same way.

      Thank you hopefully being sorted now. X

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  3. awww honey this is beautiful although a shame you had a boiler crisis, i love social media for the support it gives too

    thanks for linking up with #MagicMoments x

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    1. No problem. Thanks for hosting and reading.
      X

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  4. Gosh you poor thing that sounds utterly terrifying especially as you were asleep. I hope everything is alright and you guys are too. The blogging community can be truly incredible at times - I've seen some amazing things happen these past months :)

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    1. Same. I think the bond of shared experience has a lot to do with it. We are brining people into our lives by blogging and the support you receives shows just how much they are part of a wide community. X

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  5. Couldn't agree more, have always found social networks an awesome place to be and it's lovely to be able to support someone who's having a crisis.
    Hope this is all sorted now x

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