Stepping on toes

This morning my friend M said to me “I love talking to you Laura. You are just open and honest and I feel like I can really be myself around you.” This made me so happy. If there is any one thing that I could want for people to feel around me it is that I accept them for who they are. I really feel like that is what people ultimately want, to just be loved and accepted with no strings attached. It has not always been easy for me to do this though because while I really want to be an accepting person I am also super opinionated, very political and stubborn, and I have zero patience for intolerant people. Last night I inadvertently stumbled upon a comment blog on MSN.com for an article about Bush vetoing a bill defining crimes against gay people as hate crimes. Some of the comments on that blog actually made me sick to my stomach. Then I did something I never do, I got so upset that I actually posted a comment. After about an hour going back and forth with a person who may have actually been the most ignorant, indigent and hateful person I have ever been in contact with, my hands were shaking and my heart was racing…I had to walk away from the computer. So I have come to this conclusion, I am going to continue to try to be as tolerant of people as I can be, accepting their quirks and our indifferences, BUT I am not only not going to accept people with deliberate and hateful prejudices, I am also not going to even give them the time of day because it is certainly not getting my blood boiling over or wasting an hour of my precious family time debating with an asshole.