YOU ARE NOT ON FACEBOOK!
I was reading how Facebook has launched a “timeline” capability for all its subscribers. That means that you now will have more than the “present moment” to share, but all your significant life moments. It is the epitome of not being in the world. We have taken image to a whole new dimension. Not that Facebook is bad. It is just another illusion.
I mean, back in the day, we used to have to buy a certain car, belong to the right club, go to the right church, hang with the right people, have the right job, live in the right neighborhood, dress in the right clothes, have the right degree, and all that stuff to present the “right image” to the world. Now, in the modern age of cyberspace, we can make up all that stuff without having to leave our home. Ain’t technology great!
I wonder what all this cyberspace illusion will do to people. We seem so capable of making more and more ways to “not show up” in this world as an actual human being, but as a list or face or a history. We seem so determined to never be found out. The tool rules!
If you ever want to discover the human being behind the curtain of all this elaborate façade, you must first acknowledge and accept that all this stuff you “present to the world” as who you are, is simply not you. All the descriptions are a well crafted defense of one fearing being present to the world.
And I think all this technology is great, for it is one step further removed from that actuality and that lets us go to a Facebook and read about who we are, and maybe that one step removed phenomena, will give enough space for some of us to have a moment of realization, that “hey, that is a description of how I want the world to see me, but it is not me”. I am alive and constantly changing. I am flesh and blood and growing and dying. I am not a word or symbol or a history. I may embody some of that at times, but at times, and may be my best times, I am just showing up in this world wondering what it is about. I look out at my friends and family and lovers and just realize that I am with them at this moment and none of the words and images mean anything at all. It is direct and it is love. Tlane 2/14/12
