Across The World
Have You Considered This Lately?
maria milojković is an author here on Medium that I recently connected with.
She’s a charismatic writer and as kind as she is talented. I perused her work here and came across this post:
Reading that article reminded me of a thought that I often have that I’d like to share with you:
Maria’s located in Serbia. I read her words on a phone while I was sitting in my home in the United States. I think we forget how incredible that is: the fact that that whole experience is even possible.
This was a chance encounter in a space that allows people who are more distant than strangers to connect. I read a personal introspection from someone on the other side of the world on my phone.
Everyday, our internet signal sputters for a few moments and we groan in frustration. We mutter profanity over a tweet made by someone states away. We become oblivious to how truly remarkable any of that is because of how commonplace it’s become. We lose our sense of awe in stumbling across someone’s musings whose located across oceans or vast stretches of land or experiencing a random exchange on the streets of the internet.
There are 2 ways to go through life:
- Believing that everything is a miracle.
- Believing that nothing is.
I’m not talking about God or the alien overloads or The Flying Spaghetti monster — believe in whatever you like. I’m talking about a moment in which we’re humbled by something awesome in front of us: by what’s created in the space between us as people. A moment in which we surrender again to the fascination that we embodied as children. A moment in which we see beauty in the everyday and exquisiteness in the mundane, if for no other reason than to acknowledge that there was a time when these things were the future and felt extraordinary.
The internet, like any other tool, can be weaponized. It’s not inherently good or bad — how we choose to wield it is what makes it either of those things. But at the core of the internet is one concept: Connectivity. We have a medium where someone who’s lacking in affluence can suddenly have influence and where someone who’s been forced into silence can discover power in their voice.
We can connect with anything to the world with the causal effect, of course, being that everything has the potential to connect with us. It’s terrible an beautiful and wonderful and awful. It’s sometimes all of those things simultaneously.
Don’t be fooled by the number of keystrokes: just because something’s a few clicks away, doesn’t mean that there isn’t wonder to be found. I’m in awe that I can type these words and that you can read them and that as soon as I press “publish” from my kitchen, someone in Serbia can read it on their phone as they’re riding a train. Everyday we have the opportunity to hear another human being’s personal story and experience the parallels that exist in ours — similarities that transcend culture, and distance, and time.
That is the power of a human connection through an internet connection.
We live a thousand lives in one life because of each other and on the internet, we’re constantly immersed in a library, a treasure trove of stories that are just waiting to be found and heard. There is beauty in the terrible and awfulness in the wonderful and there are too many experiences out there in this great, big world for any of us to experience all of them in a lifetime, 10 lifetimes, or a millennia.
We find ourselves in each other. Listen to others’ stories — you just might hear yourself.
And Maria, thank you for sharing one of yours.
Howdy, fellow literary adventurer! Thanks for taking the time to read this post. There’s only so much time in a day and I appreciate you spending some of it with me.
What’s a post here on Medium that’s caught your eye? Drop a link to it below so we can all check it out!
Until next time, write on! 🍍
P.S — If you’re interested in becoming a contributor for Sapere Aude Incipe, you can find more information on how to apply on William Cho’s profile here on Medium.
