Being out is brave

A thought, w/r/t to blogs and writers and public figures everywhere: you are amazing. Nobody likes being judged, and yet published writers and movie celebrities put themselves out there, naked in the world, to share with the often-cruel, capricious and sadly stupid public. You can roll your eyes or disagree or speculate or make snarky comments and judgment calls on public figures all you want, but the thing is this: without the dialogue that they open up, how shabby are we? How introspective could we be, without dialogue and insight inspired by others?

A shoutout, to those of us who place ourselves in public: thank you.

(no subject)

I've been thinking about judgment calls. We all make judgments that have us looking down our noses at others. When we're feeling better mannered, we pull them back in and try to soften them, or we remember that things often aren't our place to say -- but when we fail to restrain ourselves, we do a disservice to our fellows. Trying to actually be welcoming of other opinions rather than patting ourselves on the back for the instances when we sometimes are restrained is one of those interesting challenges (Christian challenges?) that very few people succeed at. But it'd be nice if we tried harder.