Caili
Harris
Matthew
Logsdon
AP
Lang. and Comp.
12
December 2017
Sharing: Not Always Caring
So no one told
you life was gonna be this way
Your
job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's D.O.A.
It's
like you're always stuck in second gear
When
it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or even your year, but
I'll
be there for you
When the rain
starts to pour
I'll be there for you
Like I've been
there before
I'll
be there for you
'Cause
you're there for me too
I’m really
hoping that at least one person here has heard or is familiar with this song
because if not, none of that made sense. This theme song is from one of my
favorite television shows: Friends.
If you have not figured it
already this is the theme song from a little old TV show commonly known as Friends.
Friends, for those of you who may not be familiar with the best comedy in the
history of comedies-besides How I Met Your Mother- is the story of friends
Ross, Monica, Joey, Chandler, and Phoebe living in New York over the course of
10 years; during which this group deals with the troubles and joys of young
adult life- but better.
My favorite
character in this show has to be Joey, a struggling actor. Even if you’ve never
heard of Friends you are most likely familiar with Joey’s most famous
one-liner, ”How you doin?” Joey may not be the brightest character, the most
responsible, or the best actor, but that’s not the most important thing about
Joey. Yes, he’s caring and one of the best friends you could ever hope to have,
but the most important thing to know about Joey is that,” Joey doesn’t share
food!” Hate all you want, but Joey realizes something that many people struggle
with daily. He knows his sharing limit.
What is a
sharing limit, you may ask? A sharing
limit is the extent to which you are willing to lend your own resources to
another person. For example, I’m fine with sharing things like paper, pens,
maybe the occasional eraser, but if someone tries to share ice cream with me, I
will bite their fingers off.
Like Joey we must be able to understand our own sharing limits and
that sharing is not always caring. So today I am going to help
you define your sharing limit, by first talking about America’s “sharing
culture” and how this has become a problem, second addressing the harm that
sharing can inflict on others if we fail to see the difference between sharing
and caring, and finally teaching you a method to help you differentiate positive and negative sharing.
Have you ever noticed the American
inability to say no to sharing? For instance, if someone were to come up to you
right now and say ‘can I borrow a pencil?’ you most likely would say yes,
because saying no when you clearly have some would seem rude. The instinct to
share is derived from our natural inclination to please others; which-
according to Dr. of psychology Leon F. Seltzer, originates from the childhood
desire to please our parents.
That’s
probably why I’ve lost all my pencils.
According to PEW research center most
American parents use a compliment and encouragement system with their children
when raising them- like go to sleep early and you get a cookie. By doing so,
children associate assisting their parents with a sense of pleasure, therefore
setting American children on a path to be more sharing in life.
We share to find gratification from our
friends, family, and peers, but pencils and erasers, aside, there are simply
some things you just should not share. This might come as a shocker, but
personal hygiene products- such as deodorant, toothbrushes, and razors- should
stay just that- personal!
But one product you might not have
expected to be on that list is bar soap. Joey happens to have a great
explanation for this. He asks Chandler, ”Hey, why can’t we use the same
toothbrush, but we can use the same soap?” Chandler quickly replies,” Because
soap is self cleaning.” To which Joey
rebuts, “Alright, next time you take a shower, think about the last thing I wash
and the first thing you wash.” I don’t think that needs any explanation. In
2008, a study conducted by the University of Florida on their football players,
found that the players who shared soap were more likely to repeatedly contract Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), an
antibiotic-resistant staph infection. Despite what many people like Chandler
believe, the bacteria removed from your body when you shower doesn’t magically
disappear down the drain. Instead it just sits on the soap until the next
person goes to clean him or herself. So the message is, if you feel
particularly sentimental about sharing your soap, use the liquid variety.
Now you might be thinking, okay so maybe I
should rethink the way I share soap, but why is sharing generally an issue? To
answer that, I am going to provide you with another question: where is your
cell phone? If you don’t know the answer to this question, I most likely have
sent you into a low-key panic, but why? Over the years, we have become more and
more reliant on being able to share information with the touch of our screens.
We share so much that it seems natural to constantly update
others about the happenings in our lives. Had to drive sister to Arby’s? Get
out your phone #Hangin’withmysisatArby’s. Devoted to your Saturday night binge watching?
Get out your phone: #netflixandchillinbutnotthatkindofchillin. Freaking out because your dog turned your
living room in to the couch’s murder scene Get out your phone: #Oops
#Lookwhatmydogdidtomycouch #mom’sgonnafreak. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,
Snapchat, you name it, someone is updating, posting, or tweeting at this moment,
maybe even in this room.
That’s fine, I have nothing against social media, however there
is a point when sharing become over-sharing, and can lead to negative consequences.
A man known as
murrayiz, on the social media app called foursquare, first posts I’m at Costco.
Later that day he posts, I’m at Wal-Mart, two days later: I’m at Costco, and
the same day I’m at Barnes and nobles. There’s four days more where that came
from. Even though it’s an issue in
itself that the social media site displays his exact address every time he
posts, what poses an even greater threat is that people know where he isn’t at
the time: at home, leaving his home and personal belongings vulnerable to
anyone who would wish to take advantage of this “opportunity”.
On a lesser note, an employee
frustrated with her employer took to Facebook, and posted “OMG I HATE MY JOB!!”
claiming her boss was a pervert and always forced her to do work just to anger
her. She forgot that she’d added her
boss, who promptly commented,” Firstly don’t flatter yourself,” then he proceeded
to call her out for not noticing he was gay, the fact that she struggled to do the
simplest parts of her job, and informing her that she had no need to show up to
work the next day. By over-sharing, this woman lost her job and most likely
tainted her reputation. Getting a good recommendation for her next job won’t be
so easy.
Joey similarly experienced
the repercussions of over-sharing. At the time Joey was playing Dr. Drake
Ramoray in a satirized version of the 1960s soap opera Days of Our Lives, when he was interviewed about the show. In this televised
interview, Joey took credit for helping the writers with some of his lines, and
in effect angered them. To retaliate, the writers wrote Joey’s character out of
the soap opera, by sending his character down an elevator shaft to his doom. By
sharing that piece of information, that wasn’t even wholly true, Joey faced the
consequences of over-sharing.
I’m taking a break now from the humorous
comments, jokes, and Friends references to address some serious matters,
serious consequences our inability to define a limit to sharing has caused. If
there is one thing we should know, it’s that actions that negatively affect
another person’s life are unacceptable.
I recently watched a documentary
called Red Cry, which tells the story of the genocide of the Native Americans
throughout American history and even in today’s society, a genocide that began
with one voyage across the ocean to another land in 1492, when Columbus landed
in the Americas. Unintentionally, the Europeans immigrating to the United
States shared a multitude of diseases with the indigenous people, the most
ruthless being smallpox.
However, while it was one thing that
immigrating Europeans unintentionally spread this disease, the truly horrific
nature of European reared its head when commanding general, Lord Jeffrey
Amherst ordered blankets from the smallpox hospital to be shared with Native
Americans as one of the first forms of biological warfare seen in the history
of mankind.
Was sharing caring in this instance?
Was sharing caring when an estimated 90% of Native Americans were killed from the
diseases brought from Europe?
No,
sharing is not always caring.
Now this is the part when I give you a
solution to the problem. What you may have retained from this speech so far is
why share? Sharing has resulted in nasty infections, lost jobs, and lost
culture. That’s not the point. I
presented those extremes to show you the limits of sharing. For example, you probably shouldn’t share your
used toothbrush with your friend, but if you have a new one stored away in a
drawer, by all means share it. Don’t
share every single waking moment of your life on social media. Share the
special moments. We can’t change what our ancestors have done to the Native
Americans, but by sharing their stories, their culture, their languages, we
keep their culture alive.
The secret to finding your sharing limit:
think about how what you share will affect you and the people around you. As
American author Paul Carrick suggests,” Think once before you act, twice before
you speak, and three times before you post on Facebook.” By doing this you
become more aware of the actions you take and are better able to differentiate
negative and positive sharing.
Joey doesn’t share food, but that doesn’t
negatively affect himself or his friends; and if at any time during the series one of Joey’s
friends needed help, he was happy to share his assistance.
Works Cited
Bijak,
Klik Dengan. “The 8 Types Of People Who Share Too Much
Social Media.” SAYS.com, Says.com,
25 June 2015,
says.com/my/fun/the-8-types-of-people-who-share-too-much-information-on-social-media.
Chengliang,
Zheng. “International Programs.” American and
Chinese parenting styles | International
Programs, China Daily,
30 Aug. 2011,
international.uiowa.edu/news/american-and-chinese-parenting-styles.
Crane,
David, et al. Friends, Season 10, episode 9, NBC, 22 Sept. 1994.
Fetters,
Aleisha. “6 Hygiene Products You Should Never Share
with ANYONE.” Women's Health,
Rodale Inc., 26 Oct. 2017,
Tetuman
Lakota Elders and Warriors. “Red Cry.” Top Documentary Films, 1 Jan.
1970,
topdocumentaryfilms.com/red-cry/.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.