I really want a Like button on the comments my readers make on my blog posts. These days I simply do not have the mental energy to respond to every single comment, which was once a goal of mine. But there are so many comments I like, I would like to hit the Like button! And in some small way, I feel this would make up for the fact I don’t always respond to them anymore.

Sometimes I wonder if other bloggers have Liked a blog of mine as they have scrolled down the Blog Reader, as a way of getting other bloggers to view their site, rather than because they have taken the time to read my blog. This doesn’t bother me in the slightest, as having someone Like one of my blogs often leads me to some great new blogs. And, of course, we all want to be liked! As writers, we want others to like reading our words; it would be unnatural not to want that. But for most of us, this does not really matter, and certainly does not stop us writing.

However, I suspect the Like button on blogs has had the effect of dumbing down the word like, in the same way MacDonald’s has dumbed down our love of an old fashioned hamburger.

But fancy dumbing down being liked…

As a person with dementia who speaks out, I too want to be Liked, but for reasons not completely clear to me, I don’t really care if someone doesn’t like what I have to say. I’ve had so-called friends stand up to me or discredit me publicly, and sometimes I’ve even cried, and then eventually laughed about it and thankfully lived to tell the tale, so why would I worry about strangers in an auditorium liking or not liking me! It would be my message and not me anyway.

Mostly though, I don’t really know where my nerve comes from to stand up in front of an audience, large or small, to speak, let alone my desire to speak out for people with dementia. I think Richard Taylor has had something to do with it, although not in a tangible way. But it was his words that first inspired me to stand up and speak out for the rights of people with dementia, and it is his new terminal illness that has inspired me to keep doing it.

From the very bottom of my heart, thank you Richard Taylor. Oh, and by the way, I do really Like you!