A Reactionary Tale

A few years back, Facebook did something to expand on the previously all-encompassing “like” button—they added something called “reactions.” This came to users in the form of additional emoji-esque options that could be selected once you hovered over the like feature—love, haha, wow, sad, & angry. While the inconsistencies of those naming conventions does cause a bit of a flinch in this administrative mind, I can’t help but find it interesting how well the full range of human emotion can be encapsulated in those 6 images (although my own personal set doesn’t quite feel complete without an eye roll or side-eye reaction).

We spend so much of our time offering reactions—even to the point of reacting to someone else’s lack of a reaction. Now this isn’t a new phenomenon in human history. It certainly existed pre-facebook. One would imagine it goes back to the pre-historic era, the time where pretty much all humans did was react—to our unexplained shifting environment, to animals, to each other.

And yet in the year 2017 AD, we still spend so relatively little time learning to manage them.

To be clear, in this context, I’m not referring to Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion. More like I step on your brand new cream-colored Yeezy’s and you start swearing at me like a sailor her first day with skurvy. Taking a look at many of our families, businesses, social circles, customer service interactions, and even our charity work will often all tell the same story. We don’t like to initiate—but we love to react.

Don’t believe me? Consider the question, “Where do you want to eat?” How many memes or comic routines include a bit involving Person A asking Person B for direction, being told “I don’t care, you choose,” then having to essentially list all 26 food choices in a 10 mile radius while having each of them denied one by one? Coming up with the ideas is boring, but shooting them down is almost a sport!

Now this, in itself, is certainly not the end of the world as we know it, albeit a bit exasperating for Person A. But if this is what we do for the simple things, what happens when the stakes are raised even a little bit? How much love is never shared because no one wants to be the first to say, “Will you be mine?”

Imagine if people reacted to the implementation of racism as they do being called racist.

Oh what a day that would be.

Don’t wait for an invitation. Step up. Step in. And get to work.