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energy-healing-synergybyjasmine (Photo credit: Synergy by Jasmine)
I have discovered manners online, rather lack of, seeping into the real world by the gallon.
There is a Dis – Ease with people talking about difficult paths in their lives or tough roads they still traverse.
You have roughly three seconds until most online readers will click off to the next site where something funny and jolly holds them for a while.
There was a time when we were visibly in mourning, allowing families or individuals suffering losses to have their healing period with support and quiet understanding.
What makes me uneasy or at Dis- Ease about all of this is the internet pressure has sped everything up to the point where a person can have multiple losses/deaths or unforeseen health and life changes in a couple of years but the most you have to get through it by internet standards is a couple of minutes. You are negated or Dis- Missed as people grow annoyed that you have nothing big, shiny, happy, wonderful, funny to say.
Too bad that is the reality of living in the real world. The divide is vast enough that even journalism reflects it, Twittering on the news hour about glam/gossip when children in our very own towns or cities go to school hungry every day, old people sit alone in their rooms with no one to talk to in the last leg of life’s journey and the number of homeless people swells by the second in our failing economies.
In no way do I claim to have any answers. All I want to say is I’ll never stop talking about it. If you have a shiny happy life with no harsh realities to contend with, you are among the elite. Most of us are just regular everyday people and shit happens to us that we could neither foresee nor ever even want to have to go through. But we do. And talking is the one way we can get through it all.
That’s my Dis- covery in my own recovery from shocks you could only understand if you paddled in my canoe a while. Aren’t humans here to help and heal one another? How can we heal those we don’t even acknowledge. Sometimes acknowledgement is all the healing that is required. Try it. Find a page right now where someone is hurting for whatever they are going through and validate their experience. It’s like a wave of wonderful that means it’s okay to be human, to fall down, to hurt, to cry and to heal in whatever way is best for each of us for as long as it takes. Let me know if you do it and what the result is, I’m very curious to know 
Signed,
Never Shutting Up
(but it’s okay if you don’t like my pages, I’m good with that, we probably wouldn’t click in the real world either so click on if you must, I wish you happiness but most of all I wish you joy)
Are we overwhelmed by it all? Time was when the mourning was confined to your village, or your street. It occurred at a natural pace, in a rhythm which, if we could not precisely predict, we could cope with.
I connect the condition you describe with two historical forces. The first is the American idea of individual liberty. Liberty is a fine principle, but when it is a product of the 18c ‘Enlightenment’, and its definition is drawn up and codified by a gathering of classically-educated, property-owning gentlemen, its ‘pursuit of happiness’ can only be seen in terms of individual gain and individual prosperity. It is, if you like, a wealthy man’s final negation of the idea of community, of society. This has driven the privatised, individualised mind-set ever since.
The second historical force is the spread of technology and the shrinking world. As we have become more and more private we have been given access to more and more information about the world, information beyond our village or our street – and far beyond our own heads. There is now no rhythm to the mourning, its causes are relentless. Frankly, given this constant flood of tragedy and death, it is a wonder that we even have three seconds available for anyone else’s grief; it’s a case of “OMG” at best, “Whatever” at worst, and it’s on to the next one.
And yet we kid ourselves that we are civilised. We aren’t. I am a natural loner, a very private person, but even I force myself to think in terms of “We” and not “I”. Our world, our privatised mind-set is burning out fast. It is a juggernaut, picking up pace, and fast approaching a velocity at which it will be too late for us to step off – we will only be able to scream as we hurtle towards the inevitable smash.
Perhaps in our virtual world we can begin to rediscover something of community. After all, people do already talk glibly about on-line ‘communities’. Jan, you bare your soul much more than I ever could. You risk yourself, and seem to do it gladly. It’s a way of telling us you love us. It’s a way of inviting us not into your privatised world but into a societal relationship with you. The dynamic of this society is the balancing of needs and abilities (I know, that sounds dreadfully Marxist, and it would be if it was about money, commodities, and resources; but that’s not what it’s about – it’s about relationships, which have to be recognised before one can share anything else). I would find it difficult to be as open as you are; what I keep to myself is not ‘privatised’ however, it’s ‘personal’, which is a different thing altogether (in a society where physical resources were communally owned, no one would want to claim someone else’s underwear or toothbrush!). You, in opening your personal life are not being self-indulgent, you are being a pioneer, a risk-taker, an explorer; and I, for one, love you for it.
Bike on!
M
Much gratitude for posting your thoughts here, Marie.
Your eloquent summary of the correlations I was trying to draw – in my not so scholarly raw fashion – has such infinite resonance with the finite world into which we electronically seclude and divide ourselves without real world connection of any sort at all, is certain to reach many.
I smile to myself as I am compelled to agree with your concept: “rediscover something of community.” Some of us, I believe, already have. And in no way would we treat it glibly because those we have come to know, value and appreciate through the written word (as once was all pen pals ever had who bonded as though blood relatives over the distance), are treasures unlike any others in our everyday world.
Not every day do we happen over such real souls sharing, baring and caring for others they can only touch with their hearts.
That, however, can be so much more far reaching than the lady who calls everyone sweetheart or the neighbor you never see because they appear only when they want something.
Thanks so much for the pioneer, risk-taker, explorer compliments. They fit right with my Aries nature and my innate sense of and real struggle for fairness and justice. The risks are nothing when people like you realize what it is I am trying to do. Though sometimes I wonder myself. And then I realize it does not really matter because I cannot help being myself, no matter what. If I learned all the words in the world and wrote everything like it was already written, I would be no different from anyone. Just another fledgling writer among many fine brains.
Like yours.
Loving you back from afar, you have me smiling broadly as I enjoy your unique civility.
From one who admires your work and appreciates the time you took to share your view. Insight from within the insight. That’s you.
Me…I am just happy to be among your fellow writing minds in this blogging community of ours. Peddling on and biking with you wherever this electronic community takes us!
Not everyone is immune to compassion, and these who are are self-electing. You will know, from my comments, posts and e-mails where I personally stand on this issue. I am glad to see you addressing it and if that has a positive effect I shall be even happier and joyful than I (mostly) already am. Thank you,
Self-electing, great term, Ben. Yes I know where you are. Right here among us and I’m glad you are!
My dear friend, Aurora, maybe I’m being paranoid, but I do hope my latest Sunshine Blog Award post didn’t rankle with you; in particular the comment “The Sunshine Blogger Award is customarily bestowed upon bloggers whose positivity and creativity inspire others — a thing to be valued most highly in a world dominated by negative and destructive reportage”. I’m having a go at the media glorifying misery and making money out of it, while playing down anything good and positive in the world.
I think your blog is very moving and that you’re incredibly brave to voice your pain so openly, and I’m with you all the way on your journey to healing. I wonder if, when I was going through hell (including homelessness, poverty, family rejection, and some other things too hard to mention), I’d have had your courage to voice things in a public forum.
You’re a star and down with anyone who tries to extinguish you.
lots of love,
Sarah xxxx
Hi, Sarah,
Never! Never! Never! Please don’t have any paranoia, I had fun sharing the love!
I’m just in a terrible frame of mind these days trying to cope with daily life and all the nasty bombs that keep dropping on my head so if I don’t seem appreciative, please don’t take it personally
))))) Right on for the go at the media, justifiably so, Sarah, in my opinion for whatever it is worth 
What you deem courage I am sure many others deem stupidity but I cannot do a thing about their inability to embrace life’s cold, harsh realities. Not that I think every single one of us should write our life journey – we all have different gifts, different voices – only that I think if something I write happens to rankle, my first question would be “Why?” Of course, it would likely be answered with some justification or other but then, as a psychologist friend once told me ‘if you are justifying, you are already wrong.’
Sincere thanks for appointing me a “star” – would that I could shine as brightly as the minds of the company I keep in this blogging community. Yes, you too, Sarah, you rock.
And I must now roll. To my pillow where I shall sleep knowing that not only do some embrace the true grit of real life but understand the experiences all too well. Much love going your way now, xo
Janice
I’ve spoken a lot about “dis-ease” as someone who is an energy healer, but I never thought of the term “dis-missed.” That’s also a very interesting one. You’ve given me something to ponder and you know how I love to ponder. Wonder-filled ‘dis-covery’ Janice!
LOL My pleasure, glad you could stop by. Looking forward to my next batch of giggles reading your pages
Pondering with (and with out) you, lol lol, just couldn’t resist:)
I’ve got some ideas brewing. You keep up the clever posts, too!
Awwwe, kind thanks from my heart to yours for the suppoprt. Can’t wait to see yourideas, Lorna! xo
I hope you never shut up! You inspire and encourage and I, for one, need that. I admire your courage, faith and strength and just appreciate you so very much. xo
Thanks, Lisa! Your support is inspiring to me and much gratitude going to you now for your encouragement to simply be me. After a lifetime of keeping peace where others neither appreciated it nor made any effort to do so themselves, this is a whole new world for ME – to simply give myself permission to just be me, the true woman I am, regardless of those inevitable myopic judgments and narrow perceptions of who I really am – so glad to be here with you sharing our multi-faceted selves without fear xo
I agree with Lisa Summerlin. This is your blog. Keep writing it. I’ll keep reading it. I’m not given to long comments or commenting every time I read but I do read.
Thank you for writing…
Appreciating your visits whenever and and however you can, no pressure here to be other than you, yourself! Smiles and thanks to you
Janice, I too agree with Lisa and with you. Keep writing what you think, what you feel, what you NEED to write. It is your right to write. It helps you to heal and others to learn from your experiences.
The folks that click away, well, perhaps they are just lucky that they can’t share in and help alleviate the pain. They too will feel it one day. Because life is like that.
Well said. Thank you, kindheart, it’s the only thing I have left and the only thing I can’t stop… well, sometimes I cannot write a single word since the loss/shocks all happened to me… this is the only place I write anymore. I wish I could say I’m working on a book and I am in my mind but I don’t have the stamina to get beyond the first 15 pages I wrote before Mom died. Time… just a slow journey made less painful by all of my encouraging and brilliant comrade bloggers. xo