Day eight! I hate the common cold. It's almost everything the flu is without being flat on your back. But by the end of the day, you feel like you need to be flat on your back. Its a rainy and cloudy day in Chicago this morning, and I was so hoping it would be clear for the harvest moon, lunar eclipse tonight. Hopefully this will clear up by then. One of the best things about all this technology we have is someone will get great pictures of it and post them tomorrow. Maybe even without Photoshop.
One of the worst things is that we are all becoming much more physically alone while we amass more and more electronic relationships. Without all this technology I wouldn't be able to stay in touch with all my loved ones and friends that I hold dear, but sometimes, I wish it wasn't so easy to stay in touch. I miss that random phone call from friends wanting to just hang out and be together talking, or in today's vernacular 'chat'. The internet and social media has replaced the evening dropping by of friends, just to be social. Just to keep in touch and see what's new. It has made it much too easy to have two lives or three, or more.
Having it all. A life you live every day with your favorite people. Sometimes those are your family and sometimes not. And then the others in your life on the internet. The ones that came in a close second when you were picking and choosing where you would live. Now some of these people are just as important as the ones around you. In my case, most of my internet contact are more important than the people I see daily, but that's not true of many of you. Some are the lives you wish you could have chosen. The ones that got away. The safety nets. This reality is a sad statement on how we are evolving.
Before the internet, where we can store our secret lives and people we wish we could be near, we had to make actual life choices. Choices that took you down a road where you knew you'd never see or talk to that person again. And I think, then, the choices we made were more honest. Certainly more final. Some of those roads I walked away from have found me again in the world wide web. And it's interesting to see how their lives unfolded without me by their sides, as I once was. Its also very reassuring to reconnect with lost loves and old friend and see that the real reason you liked each other in the first place is still there. Of course there is a down side to this too, some of the ones that have found me are not the same, or didn't grow in the right direction for me to feel that connection still. They are either too bitter and cynical or just don't have the same political, religious, or sexual ideas that we shared in the past. Such is life. We grow and change and once we've taught all we can to another soul we move on. It's why some of your friends change throughout your life. You are still teaching and learning.
But then there are some friends that come and they just wont leave! EVER! These are the ones that really know you and the ones you continue to learn from and grow together. The ones that stand by you no matter how depressing you get about yourself; they are there to lift you up as you are when they start to doubt life and change. These are ones that know your life, that check in weekly or daily or whenever life gives them a chance. The ones that would pop in if the internet weren't around. The ones that would have chosen you to be near. If they could. The ones that know, life would not be the same without you in it. These are the ones, you need to keep in your life. Not just because you need them but, pay attention now this is the important part, THEY NEED YOU. That's right. Internet relationships are just as real and carry just as much of our hearts and minds as the ones who we can reach out and touch. Its how we are evolving, and changing. And there's no stopping it now.
Cheers
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