The Lent Outreach Project : The Results
People who know me will be aware that around Spring each year there is always this time when I announce that I do not believe in Lent and also that I have a project for Lent. This year I reached Lent with no intention of doing anything special for the lead up to Easter. This changed when I started to see people who were avoiding social media for Lent.
There is nothing wrong with social media. Indeed, for people who are isolated it is a wonderful invention. I was not expecting isolation to become quite so literal, but hopefully people are starting to realise that. Working in suicide prevention, I am amazed how often people try to tell me that all the mental health problems in the world are due to social media. I am not denying that some people’s experience of social media is bad, but that is not due to social media itself, it is due to how it is used. I felt that people avoiding social media for Lent were missing the point. It would be more interesting to spend forty days using social media to spread more positivity.
I decided that my Lent Challenge would be an Outreach project. During that time, I would contact all 197 of my social media friends and say something positive or encourage some kind of positive engagement. All I would have to do is contact five people per day and it would be easy. That was the plan, at least.
At first, this was pretty straightforward. In mid to late February, I knew enough people that I simply had to log on to social media every night and contact someone. There was never a problem being positive because I generally am, but I also tried not to make it look as though I was only contacting someone due to the Lent Outreach project. I will admit that one person did ask me if that was why I had got in contact!
I was not expecting some of the initial results. One friend I had seen at an Open Mic night, but not had a chance to talk to her - it had been a bit complicated because I had been drawn into conversation by someone else and had wanted to talk to her before she left and I felt bad about not doing so. However, I was genuinely surprised when she replied with her thanks because she had thought that I might be ignoring her. How easy friendship can become misunderstood and thank goodness for social media to allow this kind of contact to clear things up.
I also had the opposite reaction. I had had an altercation with a friend in January and had decided to just back off for a little bit to let tempers settle down (including mine). I am very rarely angry with anyone, but I felt that this person and I had miscommunicated and so Lent Outreach was the perfect time to clear things up. Unfortunately, my olive branch was snapped in half and passed back and my message prompted several replies, none of them helpful to restarting conversation. Not everyone is ready for Outreach.
I also started to realise how ridiculous my original prediction of ‘five messages a night’ would be. People replied. I know that it sounds strange, but I have become quite used to messaging people and not having a reply. I find that creative people tend to be very communicative as well. I suppose that they just produce all sorts of words. I am not talking about writers either, I find that musical friends do a lot of messaging too. However, that means that I often find myself messaging and then not receiving a reply. I used to be upset by this but, as I have become more used to social media, I have started to realise that everyone has a different messaging ‘style’. I write and do not wait for a reply.
People replied! I had lots of new conversations starting out and I suddenly found myself balancing answering old conversations with new ones. The idea that I could only talk to five people in a night was proving unrealistic. I had to write to five new people but I also had to answer replies from other people. Do not get me wrong here, I really enjoyed hearing from people, especially people who I had not heard from in a while. Reconnecting and reminiscing proved to be really beneficial.
Then along came COVID19 (not the title of a rather poor Jennifer Aniston romantic comedy – COVID19 kept them apart – could they ever really be together?). Suddenly the confinement and the lockdown made everyone a messager and I also realised that it was now part of what I could do to help my friends rather than an Outreach policy. It was also time to tackle some awkward ones. I like to keep in contact with people who I have dated in case there is a chance that what drew us together might have also sustained a friendship. There were three people in particular who I decided needed to be contacted and I had no idea if they would reply. However, as I noted to myself, the point was not whether there was a reply, the point was to make the effort.
I found that the global pandemic changed online communication. There was still plenty of it going on, but a lot of people were cut off from the methods they used to cope with it. If you were fed up, you could not go away from the computer for a walk, people were posting all day because they were not at work and tempers seemed to be raised into dismissal of everything or acceptance of everything. A couple of times I felt as though I had to just disengage from social media because arguments could get out of control.
I continued to do the Lent Outreach until one Wednesday evening I just could not take anymore. I had been talking to people who were having it a lot tougher than me and I suddenly started to feel that I could not cope with all the stories that I was hearing. I also read some social media posts that reminded me that I am isolated and I felt isolated before COVID19 too. It will sound strange to some people, but all those photos of happy families enjoying lockdown picnics can have quite a negative effect on those who live alone. This is part of the problem with social media and why I have written before about the need for people to be realistic ... luckily most people who I know who post pictures of their perfect family do also find time to talk about wanting to throttle their kids. Your honesty is appreciated.
For a week, I disengaged from the Lent Outreach project entirely. Indeed, for a few days I switched off all social media after eating in the evening and enjoyed TV, a drink, music or some other occupation. I realised that I am quite a giving person and I need to remember to take sometimes, otherwise it can be quite difficult. I also realise how much of the things that were banned during COVID19 were the things that kept me able to cope with a lot of the problems that communication can bring.
However, I also realised how many people took the trouble to contact me. It was nothing like as many as I contacted, but I decided that anyone who contacted me to see if I was all right was someone who I needed to regard as special to me. The COVID19 pandemic is rather like bereavement, divorce or any other major life event in that it really does sift your friends into those who will take the trouble to find out if you are okay and those who will not think to do so. Nothing wrong with the latter category, but the former are worth keeping hold of.
At the end of the project, I had contacted 60 of my 197 friends. I had also been in contact with 3 other people who are not on my friends list, including one NHS worker who frankly had bigger things to deal with than to talk to me. She is in the ‘former category’ noted above. I was disappointed not to have reached all 197 friends of course, but I also started to see what a useful project it was. If it started some longer conversations, then that was a good thing.
I am reminded of the ironic kick in the last line of Tom Lehrer’s song ‘National Brotherhood Week’. Mr Lehrer sings about the one week of the year when people pretend to like each other. He has a roll call of historic enemies who have to pretend to get on – “step up and take the hand / of someone you can’t stand / you can tolerate him if you try.” It all sounds like good fun and plays on stereotypes of various religious and national groups until you reach the last line, when Lehrer consoles the audience with – “be grateful that it doesn’t last all year”.
There is the point. Just as being kind and generous to others should not need a special week of the year, so using social media for positive communication should not need a special forty days. As I have said, I am generally positive in my communications anyway and I do believe in honesty. If I have a meltdown, I will tell you about it rather than hiding behind a ‘ooo everything’s rosy’ picture. This is good for my mental health and it is good for your mental health too. However, the Lent Outreach project should not be a forty day project, it should be an all-year project.
Actually, the Lent Outreach project should be everyone’s all-year round Outreach project.