This feels like an odd posting for me today. Perhaps I am in an odd space....
The other day, as I made my round of favorite blogs, and corresponded with some of the friends I have made through this medium, I was thinking--as I often have before--about this crazy online existence we bloggers have. It's like a whole other "reality" from the day to day physical life that we actually live in our bodies, our homes.... We may feel that we get to know each other through blog posts (perhaps even very personally revealing ones) and e-mail exchanges, maybe even the occasional IM chat, or--"God" forbid (in my case anyway, haven't gone here yet)--Facebook and Twitter. You may feel that by reading my blog for awhile, maybe even a long time, you have a pretty good idea of what I am like, and maybe even what I believe...or don't believe.... And your guesses, hunches, impressions about me based upon this online presence may be correct. I'm not saying they aren't...or are either. :)
But on the other hand, what do we really know of each other in this online world? We have perceptions, impressions, maybe even judgments made, etc., but what do we really know?
To take it even a step further, I even wonder sometimes if I really even know those closest to me. For example, how much, how well...do I know the woman who has shared my life, my dreams, my fears, and my bed for the past 25 years? Real knowing--the knowing of a person that is--isn't just about facts, perceptions, impressions, judgments.... It's about intimacy (and I'm not even necessarily talking sexual here). And intimacy, truly letting someone close enough to see all...unvarnished...is perhaps the scariest worthwhile work anyone can ever do....
I don't recommend that it be attempted online. :)
I am glad to be here...with you...in this space...this "cyber"space.
The real work...of friendship, of love, of living...it's still away from screens. It's right there outside the study door. It's in the kitchen, at the table, it's there beside that person in the bedroom, it's in laughter and tears and real conversation with the person into whose eyes you look, and who looks into your eyes.
And there will never be any substitute for that life.
Just some of the odd things I think about, I guess....
So what do you know about me? What do I know about you?
And now, some very dark humor (I told you this was an odd post):
I keep a lunatic chained
to a beam in the attic. He
is my twin brother whom
I'm trying to cheat
out of his inheritance.
It's all right for me
to tell you this because
you won't believe it.
Nobody believes anything
that's put in a poem.
I could confess to
murder and as long as
I did it in a verse
there's not a court
that would convict me.
So if you're ever
a guest overnight
in my house, don't
go looking for
the source of any
unusual sounds.
"Fair Warning" by Alden Nowlan, from Alden Nowlan Selected Poems. © House of Anansi Press Limited, 1996.
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you've warmed my cold muse-less heart my friend. Odd, I don't think so.
ReplyDelete"Real knowing--the knowing of a person that is--isn't just about facts, perceptions, impressions, judgments.... It's about intimacy (and I'm not even necessarily talking sexual here). And intimacy, truly letting someone close enough to see all...unvarnished...is perhaps the scariest worthwhile work anyone can ever do...."
Scary and wonderful. Lovely.
You're right, of course, though I find the notion more than a little sad.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone—can anyone—ever open their hearts and souls, fears, passions, desires, loves, prejudices, thoughts and beliefs completely to another? Is such a thing possible at the deepest level?
I believe in a personal, all-knowing God. I believe God does know these things about me. And I know many struggle with such a belief or reject it completely.
However, I don't honestly think anyone ever truly knows another person. Maybe we don't ever know ourselves, either. It doesn't matter how much you love someone, or respect them, or how hard you try and share your world—yourself—with them. It just isn't possible. We all play off one another. That is sometimes apparent here in the blog world. And it's not that we're even being false (although some doubtless are) so much as we tend to present that part and side of us that we think others expect or want. We do that with everyone in our life, every day.
Intimacy in the sexual sense often tells us little about each other—or only within a limited range. Intimacy in the broader sense—friendships that last and perhaps grow over decades, including that between husband and wife, significant others, whatever applies—come closer, but still miss or misinterpret as much as they comprehend. Two soldiers, faced daily with the raw bloody edge of war—firefights, sudden death, and horrors unimaginable—learn things about one and other no one in civilian life can ever know and understand.
Last night I watched yet another news report regarding the little Anthony girl in Orlando, Florida. What did parents, friends, co-workers really know about those involved, about the mother, about what was going on in hearts and minds? I don't think anyone can quite believe they missed such signals, or that someone could have it in them to do such a thing to a child. If this story doesn't break your heart, then I don't understand you on some fundamental level.
In the end, I think the best we can ever do is try and understand one another. No blog will ever replace the act of sharing the same space—cafe table, church pew, bed, living room, campfire on a northcountry beach—but it provides a forum in which we can, to a certain degree, begin.
I agree with you that the real work of friendship, love, and living, is off the screens.
ReplyDeleteI really don't know what to think about the huge amount of social interaction that goes on, online, esp among young people. Facebook wasn't around when I was in my 20s, and I really can't relate to it much now that I'm in my late 50s. I mean, just what IS the purpose of TWITTER?
Perhaps things are different for the kids who grew up with computer/Internet.
Cyber-communing is a superficial kind of touching, networking, even. Maybe it's a new kind of game:-). The people who follow Marshall McLuhan have lots of profound things to say about all this connectivity, but they don't say much (if anything) about friendship or love.
Swandive, my friend-whom-I-have-not-seen-face-to-face-across-a-table-with-beverage-in-hand for too long, and to whom I owe e-mails.... (and now he continues sheepishly)
ReplyDeleteI am so glad to have warmed your heart. A heart I know to already be a very warm one. :)
Grizzled,
ReplyDeleteOnce again your comment blows me away and is worthy of a post of its own. You have a gift, sir.
So very well said and I cannot add a thing. Thank you.
Beth,
And another meaty comment from you as well.
I'm going to say something here which may sound elitist (and probably is, I suppose). One of the reasons I have chosen and remain with blogging as my online form of "communicating" is because it seems far less shallow than I find things like Facebook, and especiallt Twitter to be... Of course, one can find shallowness in the blogosphere, and we can't all always be "deep" and take oursleves seriously. That would be tiresome and make me gag as much as Facebook and Twitter. But I have "met" so many deep and thoughtful people who blog...at least they seem quite deep and thoughtful on their blogs. ;)
I had better stop before I start sounding like a pompous ass. :)
Great poem, of course, because it hits so close to home. Sometimes I let the lunatic out to play, which isn't a very pretty sight.
ReplyDeleteBut if we don't bring our dear brother out into the light, how can he (or she) ever find a way to relate with tenderness and wisdom and generosity?
As you say, it's scary and worthwhile and might best be attempted offline, if attempted at all.
Great questions FW. Great post. Let us keep probing the darkness for answers (or simply observing reality as it is :)
ReplyDeleteBarry,
ReplyDeleteAhhh, you have gotten the deeper meaning of the poem, and of course, I am not surpised.
It is my hope that I can let the lunatic out in a safe place, with safe people...when I find them...in real life.
Molly,
I like to do both in turns I guess. :)
Thanks everyone, great thoughts here once again.
Just a bit of research I heard about one morning on the CBC -- it seems younger people who grew up with Facebook, Twitter, IM, etc. often lack interpersonal skills like exhibiting compassion. It sounds true to me. I have seen and heard of cases where students behaved in an oddly uncompassionate way. It is not that they lack compassion, they just do not know how to express it to others and end up acting like jerks. It is amazing how "civilizing" has entered the instructional aims of college teachers these days.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I would say that relationships in the blogosphere are all that different than anywhere else. You can be in a face-to-face relationship with someone and still not know them very well.
ReplyDeleteI guess, for me, ALL relationships are virtual ones, so to speak. It's hard enough truly to understand the world we each view with our own eyes, let alone to try to contemplate the world through a different pair of eyes.
(Note: I realize my take on the world and the world of relationships is colored greatly by my Asperger's Syndrome. It may well be true that, for most of you, genuine relationships are anything but virtual. This may be something peculiar only to people like me.)
In the end, every relationship fostered -- regardless of the proximity, level or medium -- is what we make of it. If you open your heart unabashed to someone whether it be in person, through letters or a blog, you are taking the chance of finding true connections with other travelers and wanderers.
"In the end, I think the best we can ever do is try and understand one another. No blog will ever replace the act of sharing the same space—cafe table, church pew, bed, living room, campfire on a northcountry beach—but it provides a forum in which we can, to a certain degree, begin."
ReplyDeleteGrizzled nailed it.
Yes, I totally track with you concerning friendship and intimacy.
ReplyDeleteBut there is something else, that works just fine online. This small-town girl thought herself mad until she stumbled across others, scattered around the world, who shared some of her views.
Friendship and intimacy are wonderful, necessary things. But I'm grateful for a little resonance.
One thing I know about you, my friend, is that you have a strong inclination to know people and be known, but that is not necessarily a universal thing. Some of us are more interested in what other people know or in interacting with people in the now, with no reference to their biography. I have a tendency to take people at face value in the moment, which can get me into trouble, but it is also very freeing. Sometimes not knowing a person is the way forward.
ReplyDeleteI always think of this passage from Tale of Two Cities when I see light spilling out of house windows as I am driving at night:
ReplyDeleteA wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!
Wow, I went out for the evening and came back and there were six more comments. I was exhausted last night and went straight to bed. Well, ok, so let me start some replies....
ReplyDeleteBarbara,
Sadly I am not at all surprised by the results of the study you cite.
RT,
Indeed you have an interesting take, which I am sure, as you point out, colored by your Asperger's Syndrome. But you speak truth: "In the end, every relationship fostered -- regardless of the proximity, level or medium -- is what we make of it. If you open your heart unabashed to someone whether it be in person, through letters or a blog, you are taking the chance of finding true connections with other travelers and wanderers."
Very well said. Thank you.
Val,
He sure did.
Wilsonian,
I hear you. I too have found many more "kindred spirits" it would seem, online than in my day to day life. This may in fact be the main reason I continue blogging. I am very grateful for the online friendships I have made and I am in no way minimizing them with anything I have written in this post.
Islandbookworm,
We don't understand each other. To be content to go through life without deeply knowing another person in all the sorrow and ecstasy both...this seems a rather barren existence to me.
But what do I know; I'm just a poor ISTJ.
K,
Honored as always by your commenting here. What a great passage from TOTC! And right on the mark. Thank you!
"this seems a rather barren existence to me"
ReplyDeleteOnly because you have different values. I suppose the first "secret" of humanity is that we are all different and value different things and experience things differently. It's perfectly natural that others should find richness where we see barrenness. They're not wrong and we're not wrong. We are just looking with different eyes.
Didn't say it was wrong. Just calling it like I see it,as you always do.
ReplyDeletePeace