It’s hard to stay away from extremes these days. Everyone has an opinion, there’s so much noise, and we constantly get mentally bombarded in today’s social networks era.

Is it just me, or does it seem we use more unnecessary emphasis in everything we say? Instead of saying “I’m happy about this,” we say, “I’m super happy about this,” or “I’m super excited about this,” and there are those that would add “super super” to make sure we understand they are indeed excited. There’s the whole obnoxious “literally” that’s been around for years, and a bunch of other words. I like to grump, so I’d blame social media and move on.

But I can’t just do that, can I? Nope. Let me tag a few elephants (whales! super whales!) in the room, but I promise not to do more than that. It’s 2024, and we have an election coming up; there’s the Middle East stuff, the AI stuff, and the Ukraine-Russia stuff. Again, everyone has an opinion, a huge and loud one (me included; I’m human), so we have to go out there and let it out..!

A week ago or so, I encountered one such angry comment on Mastodon. It was your general provocative emotional post with an image. Since it showed something that challenged what I knew to be true at that point, I replied and asked for the source so I could read more about it. I was surprised (I shouldn’t have been, but there I was) to get an answer from the poster saying they don’t have one; they just got it from a friend who posted it on Twitter (they called it Twitter, so I call it Twitter. Personally, I don’t give a beep about how it’s called these days).

Why was I shocked? Because this was an educated, smart person whom I followed. This person posts good informative comments. As I checked this person’s feed, I was saddened to see post after post of similar magnitude, many of which were also challenging what I know to be true. Mastodon has an option to mute someone for a given time period, so I chose that, hoping that at some point, I could get back to “normal” with this person.

Look folks, I know I’m an idiot. I’m a grumpy dude in his 40s. That’s why I’m happy to learn more, because there’s always more to know. Just a couple of days ago, a friend challenged my emotional intelligence (or, apparently, lack of it), and after I cooled down, I re-read what I said to them in anger. Well yeah, I was angry and said stuff based on things I thought they said, not what they were trying to say. I didn’t have the mental capacity to understand them at the time because I was angry, and I knew that, but we were both too engaged in arguing to “take a breather,” which was needed.

When I was at school, one of the simple “tricks” our teachers had for us angry students was to tell us to step out and “go wash your face.” Everyone knew what this meant: splashing one’s face with cold water. It works for me, and according to a quick search, there’s some research about it. An extra tip from me: if you’re upset, close your eyes and hold the water (chilled) to your eyeballs for a moment. Press very gently so water don’t go through your eyelids, but enough to feel your eyeballs through the eyelids against your hands. If you have short hair or are bald like I am, you have another excellent advantage and can also get some cool water over your noggin. It doesn’t hurt to try, right?

So go wash your face.

You’d laugh. It’s so basic. And as I said, I don’t know much, so take it with a grain of salt. But it works - for me, anyway. If you’re angry and you find yourself at your keyboard typing away… don’t. Just hang on a bit. Don’t worry; you will still be angry enough to write the stuff later, only, hopefully, with more reason in you. And you’ll be able to link the dots for people, hopefully leading them away from obnoxious pukeboxes like Twit-eX. (Ha! I like the name. I’ll keep it.)

Have a good day, everyone, as much as you can, and drink plenty of water! (after you drink your coffee, of course).