A Real Virtual Connection
My love/hate relationship with technological devices, internet and social media continues. My pendulum swings as I see the changes in my day to day reality as a result of our digital and virtual world.
My focus in this story is connection. It belongs on both sides of the pendulums’ swing from negative to positive. I will begin with the negative so, if you choose, you can scroll straight down to the positive.
The negative swing.
Our engagement with devices and with people on social media has been influencing how we connect. The time we spend in the virtual world is impacting on how we experience the real world. There is a sensory deprivation in the virtual world. When we are reading and writing, we don’t have access to tones of voices, facial expressions, gestures or body language. If we are using audio or visual modes, eye contact is still almost non-existent, there is no physical engagement through a handshake, hug, or pat on the back. The carry over into our real world is that we have tunnel vision, we see and look down, we don’t utilize our periphery vision, we may be physically present with others but not connected.
There is more and more evidence of addictive behaviors related to our use of technological devices. And now there is evidence that “the opposite of addiction is connection”.
The positive swing.
Technological devices and social media give us the opportunity to connect with people who we would never have had the chance to meet. Across the globe and cross-culturally, we are engaged with a huge number of people and have the potential to connect with a close few.
Case in point: my connection with Reena Saxena.
I had to transform myself professionally. Over three years ago I became owner of Creative Arts Therapies Services and learned how to navigate and make a presence for myself on the internet with a website and becoming involved in social media.
It was through blogging and posting that Reena and I met. We started to get to know each other in terms of our points of view on various professional topics and then personal interests. Reena started sharing her poetry and encouraged me to do the same. The following is a result of the outcome of our connection and it happened on the internet, on social media. We have never spoken voice to voice or seen each other beside photographs or my professional videos.
I wrote the following poem and sent it to Reena to ask her opinion.
Giving birth to a moment,
in the blink of an eye.
Connecting with a lifetime,
through a sideways smile.
I see its transparency awash with the tide,
as the moon pulls time in, and lets go with a sigh.
Reena responded by posting my poem this way and then writing her poem using mine as the first stanza.
Giving birth to a moment, in the blink of an eye.
Connecting with a lifetime, through a sideways smile.
I see its transparency awash with the tide.
As the moon pulls time in, and lets go with a sigh.Ethereal is the love, and fragile the connect
letting in the Sun, as it covers the last mile
The curtain of daylight, and brightness that blinds
The journey of the moon, is an untold story divine.They guard life, while time moves
They measure time, while life moves
They meet in twilight, like a moth kisses the flame
What spurs them on to continue the endless game?A parallel existence, getting less than it deserves
phasing out oneself to let the other, reign and shine.
The mystery of intertwined destinies pulls them in
to discover their own self, and secrets of love sublime.
My connection with Reena could not have taken place if we had not been engaged on the internet. Reena has reminded me that as long as the human uses the technological as a tool, we can continue to connect in a human way.
In his article, Resist the Internet, Ross Douthat writes:
“Our devices we shall always have with us, but we can choose the terms.”
Choice is still our strongest human ability. Viktor Frankl wrote: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
