Sharing Info

 I am a person who has always enjoyed research about a topic if it is something that interest and matters to me. Like deep drive into figuring out as much as I can about something. 

I remember being a teen and a family I baby sat for was having a baby and I wanted to buy the perfect gift so teen me drove head first into researching baby products. By the time I was pregnant with Jillian almost a decade later I knew all sorts of details about car seat safety, what products lasted longer, and how different things work. Its still something that if someone asks for something around baby products I love deep diving back into even though I have no need for the personal knowledge anymore. Researching it is enjoyment to me.  

And I have other things I also deep dive into, I enjoy researching Disney and board games, other things I research because I need to, like covid, nuromuscular disorders, and wheelchair brands. Jilli is currently in the process of getting her next wheelchair and I've spent hours looking at the different ones to make sure we are making the best choice because it needs to last her 5 years for insurance. 

It feels like the common theme of everything these days is how divisive the world is, I get where it comes from, but looking at history some of the narratives currently seem a bit produced to create even more division. 

Sometimes I wonder if it isn't as much about true division as it is about posture. Humans are not great about continual knowledge unless it serves a person... and that includes me, there are thousands of topics I have no care to deep dive into, and likely will gain little new information in for the rest of my life. There are other things that feel so vast that even when I learn new things I feel like I have barely touched the topic. I have a rule for myself on Twitter that I follow no one I could easily get their personal phone number, so that means I mainly follow people sharing knowledge about healthcare and people sharing about Christianity, sometimes including experts in both of those fields. In both of those areas I feel like I barely know anything, what I do know is a pin drop largely made up of lived experience. I keep learning but also feel like I have too little knowledge to pass along in helpful ways, and it both of these areas I feel like most people aren't interested in hearing it anyways. 

 But another weird thing about our posture currently is that fact, opinion, feelings and wants have weird blurred lines. People will share something as an opinion and someone else will argue with it being a fact. 

I have said before, I'm a person who for my whole life is going to be working on being better at small talk... its not that I don't understand its social place, its that for me it isn't natural. That doesn't mean I give up on it, but its something I will always be working on and often falling short of what I would like in. It pains me to know that sometimes my struggle with that is hard for others when having a conversation with me or that people have taken that to think I don't like them, which is why I will continue to work at it. 

For me though sharing information is a way I show people I care about them, because as much as I love to deep dive into some things, sharing deep dive information feels vulnerable. But its equally hard for me because if its on a topic where someone is looking to me for information I don't have I feel like I am letting someone down, but I am extremely far from knowing or having thoughts on the majority of topics that are out there. Also, my least favorite way to share knowledge is in the form of debate or argument, its not that I have to be right, its that I don't learn best in tension.

I also know that there are times when people just want an understanding ear and I can be faster to jump to solve and info mode before a person can or is interested in hearing the information. Sometimes people just need to vent and giving space for that is so important. 

But at appropriate times, what would change in the world if we looked at information sharing as a gift people are sharing with us? What would be different if we looked at motivation behind why someone is sharing something? I'm not always good at this, but there have been times someone says something I deeply disagree with on the internet but I know them enough to know that their heart behind what they said was love. That doesn't mean there are not truths, but if we pause to think about why someone said something, that takes us into a conversation with an entirely different posture. It also should make us all stop to ask what our motivation for sharing information is... is it to make us feel smarter or better, or is it because we care about the people we are sharing it with and want to help them. That also means being ok if people don't take that information in, even when that is hard and hurts. For me I want to see people do well, but in the end we all make choices, and while our choices all effect the rest of the world, we can't make other people's choices for them.

 Somtimes when we are hearing new information it can be one more thing, something else we are expected to know, which can feel impossible, but I wonder if we would listen and take in information if how we viewed intent and posture behind it differently? That pondering is more about how I take in information then necessarily the rest of the world.

Any maybe this is all just my perspective since this is how my brain defaults, but hey if you ever want info on things I have deep dived on, I'd be happy to share what I do know, but I in no means am an expert!