I've had a couple of posts featured on the Xanga front page recently. A while ago, I was looking through the comments and noticing the names people were calling me and the assumptions they made. From one post, people accused me of being things like bitter, angry, judgmental, you name it--things no one can possibly know from reading one sample of someone's writing.

How, I thought, can people possibly make such terrible assumptions after reading one thing I've written? And then it hit me. They can do it the same way I do it.

How many times have I read one post by an unfamiliar Xangan and written them off with a big, ugly word just because I didn't like one position they held? How often have I labeled someone when I didn't know them anywhere near well enough to actually comment on who they are?

It was a bit of a wake-up call. Yes, people have made ugly assumptions about me that are not true, but I'm far from being innocent of doing the same thing based on samples of others' writing. 

It's a Golden Rule kind of thing. I realize again how horrible it feels to be accused of untrue things based on a tiny sample of  something I wrote. (Or a misunderstanding of something I wrote.) But it's a good thing because it reminds me to never, ever let myself do the same thing, to think through the assumptions I'm making about another Xangans before I let myself write anyone off based on a tiny bit of something they've shared.