As you know, I am skeptical about blogging, particularly relational blogging's real potential for creating intimacy -- or for creating much, in particular, but a kind of faux bonhomie.
Nice to know someone out there is listening.
But at evening's end you're still left with the distractable kid, and the mud where you ran over the lawn, and the empty bed.
I think I'm at least partly wrong. First of all, many bloggers, perhaps most in the relational arena, aren't as cynical as I am. There's a sometimes lovely innocence, an unstudied vulnerability about what they throw into the blogosphere.
Some of them are professional writers or teachers -- most, I'm guessing, are not.
While the artful posts are often more fun to read than the ones with major typos and warped grammar, I find myself more intrigued by those who only recently started to blog -- and are slowly finding their way.
But what's made me a little less cynical about motives of bloggers like me is the amazing outpouring of concern for 35 year old Anissa Mayhew. Anissa, a mommy blogger with a child who had cancer, had a stroke a few weeks ago. When he's not at the hospital, her husband has been keeping up with Anissa's blog, http://www.hope4peyton.org/. There is a sincerity and a lucidity about the way he writes that is extremely poignant -- and does make you feel like you are having a chat with him in an ICU waiting room.
But the good news is that Anissa Mayhew is out of the ICU -- and that thousands of people who never knew her are sending money to support the mother of three, and praying, and offering to help the Mayhew family.
The money is real.
The prayers are real.
And I have to believe that even if it is virtual, the friendship and love are also sincere.
So count me a believer tonight. Tomorrow...we'll see.
3 commentaires:
I've been blogging for almost two years, and I've met a lot of bloggers, both virtually and in real life. I also worked in high tech for 15 years, and was active on technical newsgroups. So I'm used to "virtual" relationships.
In the past two years, I've had bloggers drift into my virtual life, share intimate emotions, start an email correspondence - and then abruptly disappear when their circumstance changed. I've seen petty behind-the-scenes fighting that has torn entire blogging communities apart. Sometimes adults like adults, and sometimes they act like ten-year-olds. It boggles my mind.
I am heartfelt in my interactions with other bloggers, and I sense they are too. The woman in the hospital you blogged about, and the support from other bloggers, is case in point.
David, I wonder if perhaps the adults who start the fight or participate have relational problems beyond blogging. I suspect they do.
My rule of thumb is -- don't say anything online that you couldn't say face to face. I may push the boundaries a little, but it helps keep me a little accountable, both to myself and the other person -- a real person in a virtual world.
Yes, you are at least "partly wrong," and virtual relationships are like real ones. No more no less and sometimes, in my experience, more after all.
People drift in and out of our lives, perhaps only for a moment, but bringing lessons, distraction, or solace - right when we need them. And then those same people are gone. There are others who arrive, and stay. Perhaps for decades. If they cannot stay actively in our lives, they remain in our hearts, and that's wonderful.
I am fairly new to this huge little universe, but my perspectives are being expanded constantly.
As for cynicism - a few of us discussed a "hierarchy of cynicism" which is perhaps worsened by the online (dating?) world, microcosm of contemporary American society as a whole. Stop by the Privilege of Parenting blog for consistent, mind-expanding points of view, as well as his (amusing and thoughtful) take on cynicism - and so much more.
As for Anissa, and others who need whatever strength of individual and collective will power, telepathic force, ondes positives, prayers, whispers - or whatever you may call the inexplicable forces from within each of us, and beyond us - if a community of strangers can add their good thoughts to giving her, and her family, a particle of mysterious help toward healing, then why not.
And for all the cynicism, there remains spirit. The human spirit. Hanging in.
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