Every Sunday one of the bloggers I follow posts the blogs she has read for the week and recommends to others. I check them out. Pass them on sometimes. But today something I  read over at WriterUnboxed just resonated so much with me I needed to post about it, now.

we writers have thinner skins because we need them to absorb the world at large, not just to accurately portray its events and its people, but to convey them authentically on the page to others.

Wow. I was feeling my thinner skin this week. Someone at the co-op my kiddo goes to sent an email explaining they hadn’t done the work they said they would because they don’t like me, I’m unpleasant. I walked around feeling physically ill about that for days. Partly because I don’t like to be told I’m unpleasant, but largely because I couldn’t wrap my head around the kind of thinking that goes on in someone’s mind, where “I don’t like you” is reasonable justification for letting 150 other people down.

The kiddo has inherited my thinner skin. He acutely feels other people’s pain. Often when we talk about it I tell him to embrace his feelings. Those warning bells are great indicators that something is wrong. They are an opportunity to stand up for those who can’t, help someone who needs it, or change the environment he’s in. Maybe he’ll use that thinner skin to be a writer, or maybe a musician, since that seems to be his leaning right now.

But maybe, just maybe, he’ll use it to change the world.