But it's fresh in my mind because it was a most intense time, there was a lot going on for me personally and for her too, I think & we were both super-stressed for our own individual reasons. But still I wonder sometimes, if it would have happened differently, if she or I could have handled it better, if the conflict hadn't taken place via email and other electronic communication media....and that is the alleged impetus for this here blog post.
You know, I'm the last thing from a Luddite but there is no TONE on these "social networking" sites we use & so much gets lost in the mix. So much can be misunderstood, misapprehended and just plain f-ed up.
And communication is hard enough as it is. I ought to know - I make my bread and butter by communicating (or trying to) within the wild and wacky world of technology/computer systems.
Witness this recent comment of mine on LinkedIn, for the thread called "Word of the Day: As BA's (Business Analysts) are expected to have excellent communication skills, I request all to post one challenging, meaningful, relevant WORD per BA per day for all to share and digest."
OK maybe I'm a little bit of a hypocrite, blogging about the evils of social media, then posting my own comments but anyways - here's my (slightly abridged) contribution -
Maybe not PARSING the thread properly, but whatevs. I'm tired, after a long day of being a BA, trying to PARSE requirements in the world of chaotic competing demands called the software-development-life-cycle (SDLC).
PARSING–verb (used with object) 1. to analyze (a sentence) in terms of grammatical constituents, identifying the parts of speech, syntactic relations, etc. 1. to describe (a word in a sentence) grammatically, identifying the part of speech, inflectional form, syntactic function, etc. 1. Computers . to analyze (a string of characters) in order to associate groups of characters with the syntactic units of the underlying grammar. Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/parsing
There's no elegant (or any) transition here but....I just finished watching the movie "The Yearling" made in 1946, based on the 1938 Pulitzer Prize winning book written by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Starring a yummy young Gregory Peck and washed-out worried (on purpose) Jane Wyman, as his wife. And, of course, Claude Jarman Jr. as young Jody Baxter -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yearling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Jarman,_Jr.
This family living in the backwoods central Florida "scrub" at the start of the twentieth century had much to worry about, but it centered on REAL things: it was about hunting and crops and livestock and hunger, if there was a flood and the food (crops) was washed out. Or if a pet deer "et it" - as they would say, in old-agey lingo, lost long ago but captured in this wonderful book & movie.
It wasn't this...have I been de-friended on FaceBook (FB) and what does so-and-so think about my latest status/video posted, am I making the "right" connections on LinkedIn, have I gotten any "hits" on whatever dating site, and shall I Tweet my location when I go out to dinner with friends?
I don't mean to ridicule people looking for a mate on any online dating service though. I'm more making a general statement about something going on that I see...and it amounts sometimes to these shallow connections and ridiculous things that preoccupy our attention today. And, trust me, it's ALL about attention; our quality of it - or lack thereof - is reflected in the quality of our lives, I do believe.
I could barely stomach the playing of "Farmville" games on FB even before watching this movie, but now it's even more aggravating because I think about how people once had (and, of course, still do) actual REAL farms, from which they made money and subsisted. For the sweet family in "The Yearling" that farm meant life or death to them! And it occurs to me that people even 10 years ago - urban or rural - could turn off their cell phones and computers and actually pay attention to those they loved.
And not be concerned that work was trying to get ahold of them or they might be missing out on some FB status, post or newsfeed. As I tweeted, for the first time the other day, admittedly boring and ridiculous nonsense and then emailed my older brother this comment:
I think this social media shit's gone too far. How does anyone SLEEP?! :)
Maybe that's just me, projecting all over the place as I am wont to do, cuz I have definite sleep issues (among others), and maybe not everyone else does? Maybe everyone else sleeps just fine, like babies - as the saying goes. But, seriously, who does that these days? (Serious question.)
Granted I watch "The Yearling", and don't want to be a woman who has to wash the family's clothes by the creek and who yearns for a well right in her own front yard, to make a hard-scrabble life just a "mite" easier. I wash a couple of dishes, usually ungratefully grumbling, in my stainless steel sink - in my nice heated apartment - while we make dinner on an ultra-modern electric stove-range and am glad I don't live in those times. (Also glad we didn't move to Alaska as originally planned, and tried to live off the land, but that's another blog post!)
Nor do I want to go back to when women (mostly) didn't work outside the home and were - literally - property of their husbands, if they were married, and property of their fathers' if they were too young to be married yet. I work now with a few brothers who are from a very "old school" Christian faith where the women wear head-scarves (cuz hair tempts men, I guess, whatevs) and long skirts and are rarely in the work-place, and men are the without-a-doubt "Providers."
They are sweet, good men and so, despite their anti-homosexual views and a lot of other beliefs I basically find fault with, I have befriended them at work. With some of them, I have honest, self-revealing conversations in which I state my piece and we may disagree but they seem to respect me, even if they still believe that I am a "sinner" and my younger brother, especially, is going to hell.
I let them be and it doesn't really bother me. It's the work-place, whadaya gonna do? One of them said, about our very wonderful gay-friendly company, that he thought he couldn't have worked there even 5 years ago.
Meaning that he couldn't have dealt with the lesbian co-worker who actually talked openly about her partner and then "claimed" to be Christian - and also working for a gay boss. I thought about it a good long while and came back with this zinger, which actually made him laugh: "You know, I couldn't have worked with YOU even 10 years ago!" Meaning that in my more politically fervent days I would have just destroyed him. With my logical arguments that is, not like going postal or anything, don't worry.
I would have felt compelled to argue against his anti-lotsa stuff rhetoric and also pro-things I don't believe in - like no real "dating" in their church and what sounds like practically arranged marriages - and I would NOT have tolerated much of what he professes to be his belief, his certainty. And let's don't even open up the abortion-debate (I haven't, at work, I know that much at my old/young age). It would have been brutal - and probably destructive of work relationships - 10 years ago that is. Now I'm like "meh" - you have your beliefs, I have mine and as long as we can respect each other and get work done...
And today I truly understand that for them, their way of life makes sense. There are fewer choices for them, in a way, and it is simpler (more simple?). I only wish life could be more peaceful and simple, for all of us, and I guess what I am saying is that this social media stuff isn't making life any simpler. How are we really reaching each other? How are we connecting, really?!?
But still, I do like me some FaceBook. I caint help it (to quote "The Yearling").
Just help me with this - does anyone feel the same? Like something has gone terribly wrong, somewhere along the way? I'm not talking about our current economic slump that never seems to end, I'm talking about something's gone wrong with our food, with our families, our communities, our relationships, with one another, with our...everything.
No matter what your political orientation, or your degree of fervor. Something's gone wrong, hasn't it? We are not seeing or reaching each other. And can we make it better or do more? Maybe the challenge is met every day that we really look at and hear each other...but it's rare, you know?
Michele, this may be the blog post of yours that I've enjoyed the most and has most made me thing. Obviously, I just read it, so this is all off the cuff... but hell, I'm an off-the-cuff (funny expression) kind of guy, and you know that, so I'll just produce a ramble dump here :-)
ReplyDeleteI think you have hit on something pretty significant about our culture, hell, our world today. I immediately thought of my children and our younger brother sitting in the living room last night, during a Christmas family gathering... all staring into their cell phones. (In Nick's case, my cell phone :-P. Obviously, 20 years ago this was not the case. You, Chris, Steph and I were playing board games and laughing and our parents wandered in and out, playing or just enjoying the scene. The TV was not on, there were no cell phones, and it was just family--great memories. I wonder, will my kids have the same memories.
Well, to some extent, yes. I wouldn't let them take their phones to the dinner table (over my dead body), and Mom cooked her usual great feast and Steph and Chris were there, and mom worried if everyone had enough food and drink, and the sibs (both sets!) cracked jokes and talked to each other. After dinner, we sat down and took turns opening our presents (Nick and Kayla got some nice presents for the other members of our family, at the last second, but that's a funny story for another time--on the phone!). Then we all (including Mom) played a fun board game together. The kids weren't on their phones (except when Chris looked up stuff on his phone regarding vocabulary questions related to the game). Everybody was present, everyone was interacting and laughing. It was great.
So... I guess it's just all how you decide to live your life, the rules and practices you set and follow, how you use technology (force your kid to turn off the damn TV and computer and talk to you, play a game, whatever).
Call up your brother or sister or parent, don't text or email them. Be there in person when you can. Connect with your neighbors, even people on the street, at the bus stop, in the store. Smile. Ask how their day is going. Even bitching about your jobs or politics or how the Huskies are playing has a lot of value and connection to it (Like me at Safeway last night to the checker: "How's it going? Tough day, eh? It sucks you have to work on Christmas, but you guys are almost outta here, right? Thanks a lot, Merry Christmas. Have a good one.")
Ultimately, technology can only take us so far. It's just a tool. It shouldn't run our lives, or we are going to lose something vital about being human.
There are million examples of techonology making the world and our lives better, and not just with communications. And of course you know this. Yer a smart person :-) Technology even, in a way, makes your career possible, and also the fact that maybe someday you could do your work from a beach rather than in a dreary office. How cool would that be????
So, as with everything in life, it's a mixed bag, isn't it? You have to accept the good with the bad. Finally, as we were talking about the other day on the phone, you can't put the genie back in the box, we aren't going back to the way things were (well, unless there's some apocalyptic event, but let's not go there, shall we?). But too, it's always good to think about these things, isn't it? If we didn't, we would just be another animal out there struggling to survive. We have big brains, and it's good to keep them limber.
Dave
PS Hey, look, I just got an email telling me someone made a comment about my FB status comment. Gotta run!
Ha ha! As always, Dave est tres amusant.
ReplyDeleteMichele, I have a friend I used to talk to almost every day who has now decided to communicate with me only through FB. He won't email or respond to emails; he won't answer phone calls and won't call. And in person, I've seen him 5x in 2 years; we went over a year without seeing each other during that time. And he lives only a mile or two away, in Ballard. I wondered for a while: had I done something; was it "me?" I realized I had to stop driving myself crazy, and I had to decide, "am I willing to accept this friendship on his terms?" The answer, oddly, was "yes." I couldn't explain why I was willing to accept something that seemed so lame. Part of it was deciding it just wasn't my fault.
I'm glad I hung in there, because I recognized recently on FB that he was suicidal (he made it painfully obvious). After strategizing with another friend who'd been similarly shut out, and who had recognized the same suicidal signs, I sent the police on his ass, and I met with him a few days later to develop a recovery plan. (Which he bailed on.) We've only seen each other a couple times since then--at a party and a memorial service. :I He didn't seem well--to me.
I wouldn't accept this kind of "friendship" from everyone. But I felt close to him for a long time and I guess part of me must be hoping that will come back someday. (BTW, it feels cheesy to say this, but lest anyone think anything fishy be happenin', he's gay.)
Anyway, when I see him living his life out on FB, I realize it's not just "kids today" who have they noses up in they phonesez. And good for Dave for putting his foot down about fonze at the dinner table. Fuck dat! (I have an elder relative who does that, b/c he must be available to his GF by cell at all times, but like so much on this blog, that's ANOTHER STORY!)