I woke up this morning refreshed and ready to face the news of the day on television, perhaps stories about the floods and fires devastating parts of our country, political skirmishes about the debt ceiling, or the most recent death tolls in the Middle East.
But stories about Representative Anthony Weiner's social media scandal continued to dominate the airwaves.
I turned on my computer and meandered over to Facebook, where I became pleasantly distracted by the postings of a few friends, and a lot of people I barely know, people I don't know and people I have never met. Everyone I bumped into was fully clothed, articulate and amusing.
I flew over to Twitter, where my stream was full of news that kept me busy clicking on links, laughing, reading and engaged.
Finally I decided to check my email. But when I found a message from a friend that I had somehow missed the week before, I felt guilty. How could I have missed this important message from someone I really cared about? A real, live friend. Who was I hanging around with these days, anyway? I wasn't in as much trouble as Anthony Weiner was, but I did often seem to know more about people that I didn't know than about the people I've known and loved for years.
Somehow social media had made me strangely antisocial. Keeping up with the world of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and that pack of people whose profile pictures seem to follow me everywhere I go online was keeping me from engaging with some of the people I'd known for decades.
I've tried my best to be my authentic self on social media (without sending intimate photos). I have on occasion sent heartfelt messages to people I've never met in real life. Some of those messages have led to friendships, and some have gone unanswered. I've received extraordinary emails from readers of a book I co-authored. But I know that I've probably not answered every single message I've ever received, and I'm not proud of that fact. I know that people are slipping through the cracks of my life, and I'm not sure that I can blame technology.
As I was pondering my life online, I suddenly heard a tweet.
A real, live one.
Outside my bedroom window, a persistent bird seemed to be trying to get my attention.
So I listened.
I turned off my computer, and made a conscious decision: I would try my best to catch up with my friends and my life in the real world.
I proceeded to take a walk around my neighborhood, and I suddenly found myself surrounded by birds chirping loudly. How had I never heard them following me around before now?
In a park by my house, I saw a grandfather playing hide and seek behind a tree with his grandson. A hipster in a groovy T-shirt strolled by me, listening to his iPod. Women jogged together, chatting. A golden retriever trotted by me with his owner, stopping to greet a mutt. On a quiet street, I saw an American flag rippling in the wind, and a man mowing his lawn.
I was present.
I stopped at the house of a friend I haven't visited in months. A real live friend. I rang her doorbell and we sat down for a chat.
We both ignored our buzzing BlackBerrys and her ringing telephone. She sliced up three juicy oranges and served them to me with a cold glass of water.
We talked about our children, our siblings and our lives. She pulled out her computer, but only to show me her favorite YouTube video, of a talking dog. We joined the 37 million other people who have watched this video and laughed.
On my walk home I stopped to admire some small white flowers blooming on a huge bush. Their scent was intoxicating. Birds continued to chirp all around me. The one in my backyard greeted me happily when I arrived home.
I've spent the last couple of years developing a meditation practice and have been thrilled with the results I've seen: my mind is clearer, my focus sharpened. Often the challenge for me now is where to place that focus, how to make life a walking, real-time meditation. I will return to social media sites and mingle with the wonderful people I've met online, but I will also try to be more present in my daily life, as well.
And no matter what distractions pop up in my life, there's a bird in my backyard whose tweets I will most definitely follow.
Priscilla Warner is the co-author of "The Faith Club." Her new book, about her journey from panic to peace, will be published by the Free Press in 2011. Follow her progress on her blog, and meet her mother at www.rivaleviten.com.
Follow Priscilla Warner on Twitter: www.twitter.com/PrisWarner
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“Time” is the problem here. I don’t know about you, but I simply do not have the time to read everybody’s status, respond to all, follow-up on those jokes, comment on all your pictures, wish you happy birthday and still have enough time on my hands to dedicate to my “real” friends.
And my “real” friends now send me “Happy Birthday’s” on my wall. I want them back in my living room on my birthday. Not just on my wall…
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I think “everyone else” is less of a good person or less anything for that matter. It’s simply that, after all those years whereas we lost touch, I really don’t know much about you anymore. You went your own way, and so have I. Life happened, I’m here now, and you’re simply over there.
I need my “time” back. So what should I do? Unfriend you?
Is this my only option?
I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to hurt your feelings —
Social Medias have forever altered the way in which we interact with people. We all used to have two categories of “friends” –
- A close group, our “real” friends, those with whom we stayed in touch on a regular basis, spoke to, at least on the phone but often in person
- Everyone else
That “old” way of dealing with friends allowed us to really dedicate time for the “real” friends. Time being what it is, with days only having 24 hours, there was just enough time to sleep, work, eat and then dedicate time to our real friends.
“Everyone else” used to be that large group of people who had crossed paths with us, at some point or another, in a shallow kind of way, without ever deepening our bonds beyond that of “acquaintances”. Because of distance, interests or lack of time, we all made choices and set aside “real” friends from everyone else.
Very rarely, someone from the “everyone else” group would enter our lives and become a part of the “real friends” group. Very rarely.
However now that Facebook and other social media sites allow us to stay in touch with “everyone else” day-in-day-out, we have begun to dedicate less time to our “real” friends, instead increasingly treating them much the same way as the “everyone else” group.
Chaos theory is the great sage,
on the social stage
of the Information Age.
Hundreds of millions spend $0.20 each day,
say the most in the fewest number of letters,
so they can fly their vices
on air lines of mobile devices.
We worship microscopic time,
As cloud computing organizes a rhyme --
in a database so big
it can be sliced, diced, and sold as credit default swaps.
In the pod race between centralized
and decentralized -- networks,
who will win?
2, to the 13,466,917th power, -1?
Too many people are sharing their most boring little details of going shopping, eating dinner, waking up, and going to sleep through these stupid paths, i.e., FB, Twitter, etc.
WHO CARES!?!??!
As the author of this story pointed out, she was missing her REAL LIFE by focusing on a virtual one.
Did anyone ever read 1984? Our world is following that path, sadly.
GET OFF OF FB / TWITTER and get back to the REAL world. ASAP.
I live in a country which doesn't 'celebrate' birthdays, for which I'm very grateful, and so the handful of 'Happy Birthdays' which later dawned on me were automated anyway, was very irritating. Not exactly 'heartfelt' is it?
And don't get me started on texting. Yes if you're on the other side of the planet, but not endless 'conversations' from someone living around the corner!
And by the way, you know how genuine your Fakebook 'friends' are when you post asking for help as your spouse has just been diagnosed with cancer. Not one bloody response.
So, social networks might be nice, they do nothing for socialization or interaction in real time. Shame too
Thanks for taking the time to comment here, Susan!
I did not throw out my tv this morning, but I did feel the need to turn it off. And I'll go for a walk when it stops raining!
Be well!
--Aaron Sorkin
Meaning, it ain't.
When we confuse reality with television, we do get confused.
But what about when we interact as we write comments, like we're doing here? We follow certain social guidelines, and the interaction is meaningful...so isn't there an important exchange taking place?
It is all very confusing indeed...
I see this problem at work all the time. Email is an incredibly useful tool. I use it all of the time. It's more useful than other forms of communication in many instances. But there are also instances were I see emails flying back and forth for days and nothing resolved. I walk over to someone's office and it's all dealt with in ten minutes.
Social media are a decent reproduction of social interactions, but never as clear as the original.
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