Piece 1, A/W 2025 Collection: The Coldplay Slay
- sarahsusak0
- Jul 21
- 3 min read
I get it. It was a single random moment in all of the gazillion moments around the world that were playing out in that particular time slot, that got stumbled upon by a Jumbotron. A giant in your face close up that ironically should be classified, as the old saying goes, as one “you wouldn’t read about”. Oh, but boy, are we reading about it. We read about it, we watch it, we discuss it, we share it, we ridicule it and somewhere in the deep dark less likeable depths of our souls, we love it.
You all know, I ain’t no preacher girl. But when my less charming side comes out to play, I do like to step back and sense whether a personal upgrade could be in the making. In the unitary space of my individual household, the memes were cracking me right up. My husband and I spent one whole hour of our precious lives bouncing ideas off each other like we were in some kind of crazed ideation session about what must be happening between, let’s be honest now, two complete and total strangers!
But as I started to sling open the doors into the wild, wild west of Social Media Town, the ferocity of the blades being thrown started to cut me up too. The Coldplay Slay, even when camouflaged as humour, felt so intense and so cold blooded that my self-shame popped her little head around my living room corner and asked me to check myself before I wreck myself. Or others.
I know better. In all my spiritual studies, I have learned better too. In the Vedic teachings, a student asked a master: How do I treat others? To which the master replied: There are no others. In the Vedas, we learn that every single person in the world, be they “good” or “bad”, is actually just extended self. We all manifest from the same source and are all one.
To communicate with someone means to comm-une, and in doing so experience unity with somebody or something. We should certain strive more to avoid using it in ways that hurt or divide. The Buddhist’s say it best when they challenge you to seek to perfect right speech with three simple, yet profound questions before you blurt out your opinion:
IS IT TRUE?
IS IT KIND?
IS IT NECESSARY?
When you shine the flashlight of that simple framework over your own words, you start to realise how very rare it is that our speech ever satisfies all three of these aspirational criteria.
Even if, all us super sleuths about strangers are correct and these two people are doing something unethical and you pass the truth test on question one, is patronising, humiliating or judging them (which also impacts innocent people in their lives) a kind thing to do? And even if you grant yourself immunity from the “kind” requirement because you think it is funny, can you genuinely give yourself a thumbs up on it having some kind of beneficial outcome or necessity? Something about the way we are using someone’s trauma to simply entertain ourselves is starting to feel wrong.
I have laughed at many a meme during the Coldplay Slay and was just a finger hover away from a public post re-share. But as I hovered, I stopped and went within. And reminded myself that words should not be weapons. And that I am gonna try to ceasefire a little more often each and every day.
If you enjoy my writing, I would love for you to read my book YOURU: Find the Guru within You which is available on my website via the link below:
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