Join Hands and Sing Kumbaya

As much as I love the internet, I despise it sometimes too. It is such an imperfect medium. Face to face or telephone conversations have a degree of personal intimacy and immediacy that the online world lacks. For all that we feel close to each other online, the online world and the online conversations lack tone, expression. People have made do with emoticons and acronyms to help bridge this gap, but it cannot ever be fully spanned in my opinion.

Being in person or on the telephone allows for a focus and an immediacy in our interactions that online does not. Message boards and emails let us zap off quick thoughts when our time allows, but it also allows for conversations to drag for hours and for misunderstanding to blossom. Even chat does not have the same feeling of a real conversation. It is an egotistical medium. As I chat, I focus on my screen and my words. I focus more on my words than on the words of my friend.

The internet has allowed me to become friends with people I never would have met. It has allowed me to stay connected to or reconnect with old friends. I have learned much and grown towards becoming the parent and the person I want to be because of the online world.

And yet...

All I want is peace. I want some way to bridge the two worlds, the real and the virtual. I know that I try to present an honest picture of who and what I am in my online communications, and I take everyone at face value. I do this in real life too; it drives Luis nuts, but I digress. I wish that small hurts did not need to be magnified by the failings of online communication. I wish that people did not feel so cocooned by the failings of internet communication to say hurtful things they would never say in real life.

This post probably makes no sense to some reading it and perfect sense to others. That is okay. I just needed to write tonight about this.

All I want is peace. Join hands with me and sing Kumbaya, dear friends. Then we'll make s'mores.

Just be careful because those homemade marshmallows are wicked hot when you roast them, and I know from experience that they can burn the beejeebees out of you. Let us bring peace and harmony to the real world and the online world. Hey, while we are at it, let us try to heal the divide that politics has wrought in our nation too.