And in case you think so, I am not only referring to things politic.
I have spent my last two years living in a bubble where I am writing and sending out words to a lot of people, from seminary to this blog/ MailChimp, in emails, and other (often countless vain) attempts at making connections with others.
I have posted regularly to a safe social media site (NOT Facebook!!!!), and while there once was a lot of interactivity there, now, there is very little interactivity. It comes down to just me posting, and sending out words, sending words into the ethers from my little bubble, where even an echo is rarely returned. Two years later, I feel is more deeply disconnected than I ever was.
In 2000, Robert D. Putnam wrote the book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. The book’s central theme is simple: “For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century a powerful tide bore Americans into ever deeper engagement in the life of their communities, but a few decades ago—silently, without warning—that tide reversed and we were overtaken by a treacherous rip current. Without at first noticing, we have been pulled apart from one another and from our communities over the last third of the century” (p. 27).
While Putnam's book focused on the social, community fabric of our country, I think he was on the precipice of something much deeper. As the internet had not yet quite exploded into what it is today, he was glimpsing the beginning of a much more profound, and treacherous, rip current about to take us all under.
The internet has now become so deeply entrenched in marketing. Even this MailChimp note is embedded with cookies and trackers and will vomit forth all kinds of market analysis data so that I can "sell more of my product to more people." Funny thing is, if I have a "product," it is my heart and soul. And that cannot be marketed.
Everything online has become "monetized." Monetized! Even blogs! Marketing ploys and niches.... it's deafening. We have each become nothing more than a marketing opportunity, whether via emails or Facebook or some other social media platform.
Yet, what is a real conversation? Poets like Rumi and Hafiz and Oriah Mountain Water have all written about them. Because her words are so much better than mine, I would like to share a few excerpts from the well-known poems and books of Oriah Mountain Water...
From The Invitation:
"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human....
It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments."
And from The Dance:
"Show me how you follow your deepest desires, spiraling down into the ache within the ache, and I will show you how I reach inward and open outward to feel the kiss of the Mystery, sweet lips on my own, every day....
Don’t tell me you want to hold the whole world in your heart. ...Don’t tell me how wonderful things will be . . . some day. Show me you can risk being completely at peace, truly okay with the way things are right now in this moment, and again in the next and the next and the next. . . Tell me how you crumble when you hit the wall, the place you cannot go beyond by the strength of your own will. What carries you to the other side of that wall, to the fragile beauty of your own humanness? ..."
And from her book, The Call:
"Wake up my love. You are walking asleep. There's no safety in that!
There is no where to go. What you are looking for is right here. Open the fist clenched in wanting and see what you already hold in your hand. There is no waiting for something to happen, All you have ever longed for is here in this moment, right now.
You are wearing yourself out with all this searching. Come home and rest. How much longer can you live like this? Your hungry spirit is gaunt, your heart stumbles. All this trying. Give it up!
Let yourself be one of the G!d-mad, faithful only to the Beauty you are."
Just like our youth are no longer taught to write cursive, and hence, it has become a foreign language to them, we are losing our ability to have real heart to heart conversations. And those of us who remember how much we need to have real conversations are, perhaps, simply losing our interest in them, or maybe just choosing to make time for other things.
At the end of the day, words now are cheap, almost worthless, a commodity to be traded, devoid of attachment to value other than monetization or convincing someone of some cause or ideology or to buy –or sell– something. We have even reduced sound bites to memes!
So, I am thinking perhaps it is time for me to end this MailChimping. It is not conversational; it is me talking AT you and throwing words out into the ether space. We already all suffer from sensory and media overload, do we not?
I long for conversations, heart to heart, soul to soul. Even if it's mundane daily minutiae, at least if it is a real interactive conversation, then there is a deeper sharing that is taking place, with an undercurrent of care.
As my sig card has always stated, I am available for conversations. Email is fine. Conversations don't always have to be face to face, but they do need to be heart to heart, caring, thoughtful, time made for the value of really caring about another person. I refuse to be a tick mark on someone's to do list, and I refuse to do that to you, as well.
It is time for me to end these words I'm just putting out into the ethers, and stop the mad collection of marketing data, when what I really want are conversations.
Thank you for the time you have put into reading my Ramblings in the past. I hope you have enjoyed them, and look forward to conversations! If you are looking for that, you know where to find me. I'm but an email away...
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