technology

how to actually be happy on social media

February 20, 2017 by Lyndsey 2 Comments

I was laid off from my day job a few weeks ago, and so were four of the five coworkers in my department. Now, suddenly, we have all found each other on LinkedIn. We are recommending each other’s work and making up words for the skills our boss took for granted. Savvy people are on LinkedIn all the time, even when they are employed, but we all had to resurrect our accounts from graves of various depths. We are not savvy people; we are English nerds of the highest order. Book people.

So I have a barely-updated LinkedIn account and I’m thrilled to have a new website, too, but I’m not always sure how to talk about it. Every time I do so I mean to say something grateful and happy, because that’s genuinely how I feel. The new site does feel more like home; it makes me want to write, and write well; I am proud and excited about it. But I worry intensely about it nonetheless. If the Internet is a layer on all of our lives, my layer is a piece of paper with too much glue: it wrinkles, smudges, sticks to my fingers when I try to smooth it out, and never, ever lies snugly next to the other layers.

People get really irritated when someone preaches about the evils of technology, so I’m not here to do that. The Internet does plenty of wonderful things, from informing you about stuff you’re afraid to ask about, to fostering very real connections between people. That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? It does that stuff just often enough to keep us all dripping it into our veins for hours every day; and the hope of providing something like that to someone else keeps most of us contributing to the stream. Photos. Words. Videos. Links. drip. drip. drip.

The Internet, then, has given us all an audience to manage. Precious few of us have ever run a PR campaign or even a Glee Club quarterly newsletter, but now we are broadcasting to hundreds or thousands. We post so Grandma can see baby pictures. We post so Mike From High School will change his mind. And we post, most of us, most of the time, for the Monopoly money of little hearts and thumbs-up. drip. drip. drip.

If you’re not promoting a business or whatever, you might not think about all this in very analytical terms. I hear people say my phone has taken over my life or I feel like I have a big responsibility to interact on social media or Facebook makes me anxious or I’m not sure whether to post pictures of my kid, but aside from quitting social media entirely, we rarely have tools for answering these questions very well. One reason: our phones and our networks are designed to make us feel like the center of the universe. But that leaves us confused when the universe turns out to be so very far beyond our control. By contrast, social media consultants and Instagram stars have a lot fewer of these dilemmas, in large part because they are focused on two things.

First, they know their goals. For businesses, bloggers, and Instagram celebs, those little hearts and thumbs aren’t Monopoly money, and they’re not adrenaline shots or personal validation stickers. They’re real gold: engagement with their posts translates into dollars. Maybe the things you want from social media are a little less measurable than theirs, but it’s still worth it to write them down. Every time you log on, you’re seeing content from people who have identified what they want you to do and invested a lot in getting you to do it. Even if it’s something as simple as a refreshing coffee-break distraction or a glimpse into your friends’ lives, shouldn’t someone occasionally be checking in on your priorities? This coffee break isn’t refreshing anymore can be a powerful realization.

Once a social media master knows what they are aiming for, their Internet choices become a lot more objective: these people need a better picture of the universe if they’re going to succeed. Their second focus, then, turns from being the center of the universe to cultivating an obsession with their audience. At its worst, this turns into tailoring every moment of your own daily life to others’ tastes. But at its best, the question who am I posting this for? can bring clarity. Your audience isn’t yourself—if you just want to save something, there might be a better place you can remember and access it later. And your audience isn’t your sworn enemies—they’re never going to admit you are right or feel chastened by your successes. You probably don’t have the time or the headspace to interact with them and the people who actually like you.

There’s one final thing the consultants likely won’t tell you. To succeed on the Internet, yes, you have to know your audience. But to be happy on the Internet, love your audience. Be a giver. Be a liker. Be yourself. Pray for your (political) enemies. Give out the recipe.

Don’t let this love be a shallow thing. Let it be wise. Know when to share the strong words, and when to tell it slant. Know the difference between #grateful and #gloating. Be vulnerable, by all means; but NO ONNNNNE needs a picture of your (literal or figurative) open wounds.

Most consultants won’t tell you to love your audience; it won’t get you attention through manufactured controversy and it won’t get you dollars that people shouldn’t spare. Maybe love isn’t really even what this stuff is designed for. But maybe, I’m realizing, we each have layers we’ll always have to wrestle into the contours of a love-shaped life.

How to stand tall in the noise of these days

February 1, 2017 by Lyndsey Leave a Comment

I am reluctant to speak into the din of these days.

An observation: we have reached a point where the two major sides in our debates are both driven by fear. Our president was elected for his projections of strength: for promising to protect us from bad hombre immigrants, from the globalized market, from terrorists, from the pace of social change. And now his policies have stricken terror into the hearts of his opponents—worried for themselves, for minority friends, worried about international relations or about creeping authoritarianism.

Though the cacophony appears to address many issues, in the end we are mostly responding to threats. We all perceive our particular threats to be very real, while dismissing others’ fears and blazing with disbelieving outrage when they dismiss ours. In our anger we cannot see how lonely this has made us. We feel the loneliness, but not consciously; the ache only fuels our outrage.

The Ph.D. in political science ~~whom I keep on retainer~~ who is my dear friend tells me that the biggest protests work, even when they’re not supposed to, even when no one expects it. So I will go to the protests. But I won’t be outraged; it’s not in my nature. With Paul I will proclaim that we all have gifts differing and I will thank God for those who do outrage well and righteously. I’ll be the one giving out water bottles, or crying. You’re probably not supposed to cry at a protest, but I’m mostly sure that’s what I’ll do.

What is in my nature is to passionately declare the extreme urgency of everyone sitting down and thinking some more. This is an unglamorous and unpopular vocation. Thinking sells best when paired with a vice—traditionally pipe tobacco or whiskey. Outrage is brighter, the work of a moment, and pairs well with that comfort food, superiority.

Still, even the most active of activists is already acknowledging that our task won’t be over for a long time, and we’re going to need something that burns a bit slower. I hasten to add that, while we must equip ourselves for a long-haul future, we have a yet lengthier past with which we must also deal. This crisis did not develop overnight, as if caused by some particular genius of Trump’s for villainy. This is the overflow of ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred years. If we accomplish political goals without any mention of these things, they will only fester. The colonization of rural places, for instance: extracting resources from a place while systematizing contempt for its people. The abandonment of national politics to lobbyists and of local politics to the dogs. The abandonment of our minds to our screens. The utter lack of restraint on our consumerist desires, so that each side accuses the other of entitlement with great accuracy and total hypocrisy. And an extreme failure, on all sides, to know the oppressed, to sit with them in their pain, to share bread with them.

These things, of course, cost more than five minutes and 1000 words. These things rarely go viral.

But perhaps, I concede, the past is a discussion for another time. Perhaps what is before us, just today, is to excavate and banish our fear. If you are a Christian, you have no excuse for it; if you are not, let me assure you fear remains a hindrance to you. It is not naive to resist fear. You may be aware of a danger without giving that thing power over you. To the contrary, once fear is acknowledged and set aside, you are more agile, more perceptive, less prone to mistakes. Once fear is set aside, it clears the way for that most searing weapon: love.

I read an article several days ago about what to do, the basic actions that would be essential to resisting the extremism we’re witnessing. I found it wise and compelling in its simplicity—things like interacting with your representatives; seeking out reliable news sources; taking care of yourself (in the long term, going to bed on time and eating your vegetables); learning about privilege and oppression; getting to know the people in your community who stand to lose the most. And as the list went on, I realized that these were all things a truly excellent citizen would be doing regardless of who was in power. It was comforting and intimidating, I suppose, to realize that all anyone needs to do to stand up against a bullying President is become a truly excellent citizen.

What was, for me, conspicuously absent from the list was becoming aware of any new development within ten minutes of its occurrence; scrolling through Twitter with increasing indignation and despair; firing one-liners or articles at people on Facebook who would then be compelled to recognize the error of their ways. As the days have gone by, I’ve felt more and more antipathy towards the hot takes and the outrage machines and even the copied-and-pasted Bible verses. So much blame for our situation goes, in my mind, to our penchant for preferring the viral to the true; to our self-righteous armchair activism; to our willing deliverance of our attention to the antics of national figures, at the expense of understanding the goings-on in our own cities and states.

Do you want to drive out fear? It doesn’t happen when you get a good grasp of the situation from twitter or even from the news. It happens with love. Have the courage to love yourself without the safety blanket of self-righteousness. Have the courage to love someone else without assuming you already know who they are. Walk around your neighborhood and talk to the people you meet. Plan an uncomfortable dinner party: invite someone different from you. (Have lots of comfort food.) Call your representatives on behalf of someone else even though it inconveniences or terrifies you. Read about an issue you don’t want to face. Take up that habit you know you’re supposed to do—riding your bike places, donating to charity, praying for your enemies.

Pray. Pray more than you tweet. Pray before your political calls. Pray for the country. Pray for refugees. Pray before you eat. Pray before you buy. Pray with other people.

Read books. Gather with friends. Don’t think about doing good deeds; do them. Be aggressively present to your own life, your place and time.

Be still. The Lord will fight for you. The noise will take care of itself.

Reality on November 9

November 7, 2016 by Lyndsey Leave a Comment

The election is coming and everyone is in retreat mode. We are hunkering down with our families and our favorite foods, our senses of dread and our hopes that the end of the election, whatever it is, will bring some relief: from the drone of news coverage dissecting scandals, the clamor of opinions on Facebook. Maybe then we can settle into the holidays. Go back to some kind of normal—even if the wrong candidate is elected.

We are completely burned out on hyped-up emotion and whiplash twists. We’re absolutely through with being lied to, condescended to, berated, flaunted and flattered. Everything about the process and the people reminds us that the world where these decisions are made is far removed from the worlds where their impacts are felt. We still hope to come out on the winning side, but mostly we just hope to come out with our hearts intact. The fun of participation is replaced by guilt and mild hysteria.

I think this must be how reality TV contestants feel as the end of shooting nears.

Do people on those shows ever lay in bed and wonder how they got there? Treating some manufactured situation like it is life or death, being manipulated by powerful people for the sake of entertainment.

It is no new idea that reality TV has nothing at all to do with reality; nor that the U.S. presidential election has taken on the character of a reality show. But this election’s utter lack of coherence should move those ideas from the realm of “interesting thought” to “theme for meditation.” We have some hard questions to ask ourselves about how and why we have spent an entire year participating in this parody of representative democracy.

So many are looking for some sort of hope and comfort amid the vitriol, but writers and leaders I know are at a loss. We have not found some new perspective that can flip the situation and make things seem less bleak. We are watching our country take sides in a battle between a blustering, authoritarian billionaire and a calculating political dynasty; we have seen what passes for democratic debate drive people farther apart, not closer to understanding one another. Issues of policy and discussions of philosophy of government have been completely buried under personal attacks, hysterical accusations, buzzwords and resentment.

We need to admit that this is a time for mourning.

Of course it would be a relief to go on from here and pretend that 2016 never happened; the week after the results come in is absolutely going to be one long exhale of pure gratitude that it is over. Throw a party; burn some election signs; go back to posting pictures of your food on social media. But please don’t just check out after that.

Don’t accept that an election has to tear a nation down instead of building it up. Don’t blame others for your despair. Don’t believe that we are powerless to make something good of our country. Despite the profits others stand to gain from your believing otherwise, there are choices between pinning all your hopes to the head of state and retreating to blissful ignorance by your own fireside.

It may be that little to come out of this election will seem to be worth the price. But we have another choice ahead: whether to treat this moment as a nightmare we can forget about, or to make this the moment we start to ask our own questions and take our own actions. We can look around at the shambles of this process and realize that the things we think it stands for—democracy, citizenship, dialogue—can only be rescued if we rethink them from the inside out.

We will not heal our country by electing the right politicians, reading the right thinkpieces, or convincing others of the right opinions. We will not be free of corruption and bribery, mud-slinging, lies, or demagoguery in our elections by continuing to focus all our energies on a single member of the federal government every four years. We will not escape from anxiety as long as we continue to hand over our attention and our emotions to everyone on the internet without discretion.

If we are going to rebuild our democracy, we each have a brick to lay. We can get involved (or at least informed) in local politics so that Washington and the president don’t loom so large that we can only speak about them in hyperbole. We can make an effort to spend time with someone who is different from us and imagine how their values make a positive contribution to the world. We can pay attention to all the ways we exercise power as citizens: by volunteering, in the ways we spend and give money, even by choosing where to turn our attention instead of letting Facebook and TV lure us into places of fear, anger, or division.

Still, none of these things will happen, nor will they make much of a difference, unless we face our pain and frustration. The change I’m talking about is a 180 degree turnaround: in Christian language, repentance, and it is really never a pretty sight. There is hope in it, but first there is pain. There is love, but first there is conviction. You have to stop chasing hatred and blame and admit that you are frightened, you are small, you have been hurt in the past, and admit that your pride has turned you ugly: “in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.”

Only then can you see reality as it truly is.

how to get things done in spite of computers

September 23, 2015 by Lyndsey Leave a Comment

Today I had the thought that I should do some productive things, so I sat down with my computer.

That is the end of the story.

I did some stuff for a few minutes, then got stressed out, and then the Internet took over. My thoughts of writing, designing, planning or even just learning something completely dissolved into pictures of The Trumpster and Instagram updates on other people’s vacations.

I repeat this boring story nearly every day, and then feel bad about all the things I don’t get done. I watch other people (on Instagram) doing way, way more cool stuff than me. Then I keep scrolling. And still, when I want to be productive, I instinctively reach for my computer. Somehow that one object has come to represent for me all the things I should do, all the things I don’t want to do, my entire capacity to do them – and all the distractions I’ll ever need to pretend I can alleviate the pain of to-dos by prolonging them with useless not-that-fun “breaks”.

I’ve known for a while not to do this with personal writing. Going to the Internet for inspiration is like going to a buffet for its pleasing variety of diet-friendly food. You might find it eventually, but not before thirty-two other things have caught your eye and you’re so full you need a nap like NOW.

I’m starting to think of my computer – in all situations – as that friend who can be funny and helpful sometimes, but also keeps you sitting around gossiping or whatever long after you’ve dropped several hints and glanced ever more often at the door until you finally fake a phone call to extricate yourself from the needy situation which is that friend. Every meeting needs an exit strategy.

The computer doesn’t actually contain productivity rays that make things get done. YOU DO. And your new (reliable, nice,
emotionally healthy) best friends are going to be a pen and paper. Maybe a planner if yours is really swell with lots of writing space, or if you are one of those people who gets crazy eyes about their planner, takes it to cocktail parties, and occasionally gives it a fond stroke throughout the day.

Write down all the things you have to do. I don’t usually think of these things in any manner of logical order, so I leave space for putting like tasks together.

Prioritize your tasks.

Set a high but realistic goal for today, and envision a reward for getting it all done (even if it’s just “stop working and go outside/eat with family/drink eleven beers.” whatever.)

Put your smartphone in another room. BE STRONG. You are going to do all the things you just said you are going to do. This requires you to not do other things.

Before you start on any task, figure out exactly what you need the computer to do for you in order to complete it. You may need some facts from the Internet, but be able to analyze the data or have a phone conversation about it without the computer! It is often more helpful to extract the information from the light-box and walk away. Sure, it can feel like handily skipping a step to just refer constantly to the thousand tabs you have open, using the computer as a Portal to All Times and Dimensions – but who really, deep down, wants one of those? (hint: not your brain). You look like a rat playing a game of “Where’d I Hide My Cheese” in a lab experiment to study mammal confusion and desperation. Organize the information in a way that’s useful to you – printed or written – and you can stop “accidentally” clicking on the “GIFs of Raccoons Doing People Things” tab.

Don’t do all the computer things at once. Work on one project or set of tasks at a time. When you get to a point where you really need the computer, think, “time to pull out my fact-finding/word-processing/advertising/telecommunication machine!” and only use it for that fact, that document, that email. Distractions are your enemy! Funny/compelling/worrisome off-topic emails are the barbarian hordes threatening your productivity Rome! THEY CAN WAIT TIL AFTER LUNCH.

At least do a better job of using one program at a time.

Do email for specific chunks of time during the day.

Tick off your to-do tasks with markers, stickers, or by tearing them off and burning them! Whatever makes you happy! Stay focused. Gettin’ stuff done feels good.

On smartphones: an excursus on coffee

March 12, 2015 by Lyndsey Leave a Comment

I harbor a deep and abiding hatred for Keurig coffee brewers – the devices that deliver a single fresh-brewed cup of coffee in about a minute with the push of a button. To the many devotees of the Keurig whom I know, this confession may come as a bit of a personal affront; why, they might demand, should I expend precious energy resenting a machine that can perform such a miracle? As several of them quite sensibly said, when the coffeemakers first came out and I first began ranting about them: “Don’t get one then.”

My irritation, though, was not only with the sighs of neeeeed inspired by the coffeemakers in people who, weeks or months earlier, had been quite content not to own a thing they hadn’t imagined existed. Nor was it only with the inferior (but outrageously expensive) coffee produced, the bizarre noises that seem to be necessary for the Jetsons-like effect of the process, or the ecological disaster that is the unrecyclable K-cup. Rather, I have come to realize what my initially almost-unexplainable discomfort with the Keurig’s popularity really reveals: the Keurig, like any tool or technology, is the physical instantiation of a whole mess of assumptions. In this case, they’re assumptions about machines, about humans, and even about coffee which, to my mind, make the Keurig the culmination of the entire phenomenon called “late modernity”. Here are a few of them:

A machine should be designed to look nice and perform efficiently, not to perform well or to be easily understood and repaired. Watching a Keurig make coffee for the first time has an awe-inspiring effect precisely because we do not know how it works – and we do not want to know. In late modernity, we prefer and expect that our machines will work magic for us using mechanisms that are completely hidden, and would be inscrutable to us if they were not. In place of concern for whether a thing is well-made or even useful we have taken up an obsession with surfaces and “design” as exemplified by the impeccable tastemaking of Apple, Inc.

Individuals can and should expect to be able to choose between many options at any given time. The Keurig user never again has to share a pot of coffee with that one colleague who makes it way too strong. In fact, the brewer can be used to make any number of hot drinks: mediocre coffee, mediocre tea, mediocre cider, and mediocre hot chocolate can all be yours. Nor must anyone ever feel silly again, trying to make one cup of coffee in a large drip coffeemaker when she is the only one at the breakfast table. A large, shareable pot of coffee is really rather undesirable when everyone has her own preferences, schedule, and needs. I have been to a catered dinner where a line snaked around the room as an attendant made one cup of coffee at a time in an effort to offer more drink choices (at the expense of time for convivial conversation over dessert).

The laws of physics should be manipulated to minimize wait time. To make a good cup of coffee requires a certain (rather small) number of minutes which we refuse to acknowledge we “have”. We prefer to make a terrible cup of coffee by blasting hot water through a plastic capsule of powder. The value of technology is in speeding things up, not in making them “better”. Things can always be faster.

Throwing things away is preferable to cleaning them. From start to finish, the Keurig hides those pesky coffee grounds from us, containing them so there is no measuring, no spilling, and no ugly waste (that we can see). Compared with the value of being protected from our own waste and saving the time required to clean anything, the cosmic demerits of throwing out an impenetrable plastic capsule are immaterial. In fact, we have come to expect this of ourselves: “In the ‘nowist’ life of the denizens of the consumerist era, the motive to hurry is partly the urge to acquire and collect. But the most pressing need that makes haste truly imperative is nevertheless the necessity to discard and replace.” New moments, new desires, new opportunities require that we abandon anything old, bulky, or high-maintenance.

It does not matter where things come from. The powders in K-Cups bear only a glancing relationship to coffee beans, milk (for lattes), tea leaves, apples, or chocolate, but this is no matter. The authenticity of the ingredients or depth of flavor derived from “real” foods has little value compared with the ease of acquiring a similar, pale and limpid cup made from dried, processed, and imitation foods.

Coffee is a caffeine-delivery system. We don’t care much for the quality of our drink because the drink is only a means to an end. It is a surreptitiously-snatched “treat” to get us through an interminable day, or a substance we treat (with respect to caffeine) in a manner similar to abusers of wine, in Robert Capon’s estimation: “Nothing appalls me more than to hear people refer to the drinking of wine as if it were a forbidden and fascinating way of sneaking alcohol into one’s system… With wine at hand, the good man concerns himself, not with getting drunk, but with drinking in all the natural delectabilities of wine: taste, color, bouquet; its manifold graces; the way it complements food and enhances conversation.” The addictive qualities of coffee, likewise, have come to overshadow the conviviality of the coffeehouse or the savored subtleties of flavor afforded by various growing regions and roasting methods, which historically made it so valuable. Demand for caffeine in coffee form has, in turn, driven prices down so that a labor-intensive luxury food has become a commonplace whose existence depends on the exploitation and degradation of workers who have, in all likelihood, never seen a Keurig.

By insisting that a machine for brewing coffee can have moral significance, I do not mean to condemn all instances of its use. It must be said that I harbor no animosity or ill-judgment towards Keurig users, and I readily acknowledge that certain situations or certain life patterns may make the Keurig a good choice of hot-drink-production apparatus. Moreover, like most people, I am quite willing to abandon all matters of principle in situations I consider dire, and will happily accept a cup of Keurig coffee on mornings when no other is available. I only wish to raise the point that it is worth asking questions before rushing to adopt an expensive space-age apparatus: What do we lose by being too busy for fresh-ground coffee from a drip machine or French press? Is the convenience of a K-Cup really worth the money ($40 a pound)? What exactly makes the Keurig so desirable, and what does that say about our way of life? And what is coffee really for? Though we have learned to regard everyday choices and the pursuit of real, full enjoyment as trivial, it might yet be important to return to Capon’s meditation on sin and human vocation:

“Wine is not – let me repeat – in order to anything but itself. To consider it otherwise is to turn it into an idol, a tin god to be conjured with. Moreover it is to miss its point completely. We were made in the image of God. We were created to delight, as He does, in the resident goodness of creation. We were not made to sit around mumbling incantations and watching our insides to see what creation will do for us…Creation is God’s living room, the place where He sits down and relishes the exquisite taste of His decoration. Things, therefore, as things, are inseparable from God, as God… Poor earth, poor stars, poor flesh. Without a Giver, they never become themselves.”

By forever turning the ends of God’s good creation into means, by asking that machines hide work that can be enjoyably done by human hands, by prizing the choices of individuals over the complex rewards of sharing, does it not seem that we late moderns commit the sin of continually rejecting a priceless gift?

as we are overcome

February 26, 2015 by Lyndsey Leave a Comment

or, a pause without resolution.

This semester I am writing a thesis about Christian virtue ethics and smartphones, so now more than ever I am constantly observing and wondering where all this is going. It would be easy to condemn much about smartphones, social networking, and constant connectedness wholesale, dismissing the many ways these things can enrich our lives. It is also easy to wholeheartedly embrace these new wonders, turning our minds over to be augmented, scattered, overawed, and manipulated by turns. What is difficult is to really understand new technology and use it wisely. For better or for worse we have stolen fire from the gods – now what?

Even the most enthusiastic adopters, I think, are ambivalent about some aspect of the information age. We have concerns about interpersonal relationships, our ability to pay attention, our privacy, our own use of time. But overall, we think, who are we to complain about Progress? It is many people’s job to encourage us not to think about these things, and we are relieved to let them hide our worries from us.

Those of us who think about them anyway are familiar with a pile of stories about earlier inventions. People found reasons to oppose the use of writing, the printing press, railroads, the telegraph. These stories are often trotted out by people with some interest in promoting new technologies; “What silly reactionaries!”, we are meant to say. Some of them, to be sure, were just naysayers, fearful of all change. But some of them raised important points that could have led to wiser adoption of these things. I, like most literate people, am quite glad for the invention of the printing press; but I often wish that my own childhood (and the nascence of modernity) had kept alive more embodied and emotional practices, ways of knowing, ways of connecting with the rest of the world – alongside the miraculous, beautiful practice of sitting in a chair alone, following line after line of argument and story, learning of the viewpoints, lives, desires and loves of people one would have never otherwise met.

Five hundred years later, we had only begun to fully grasp everything movable type had done for us – all the ways it changed our species – when TV and radio came along. We had barely even noticed TV’s effects on us when the Internet sprang out of scientific labs and into our homes. It took over a century for use of the printing press to become widespread; today, change is truly exponentially accelerated. It will be much more than five hundred years until we can understand today’s revolutions of high-speed internet and microcomputers. It is nice to think that we will figure it all out in time, that we only need space and grace to iron out the wrinkles in our new way of life, and to some extent I believe it. But at this rate, we can have no idea where our technology will take us if we do not shape it and use it according to our own well-defined intentions. In the meantime, I do not think it is unreasonable to be completely exhilarated and terrified; the rate of change and the power of our tools has moved far beyond a human scale, a human capacity to manage the emotions, responsibilities, and totally novel situations that are occasioned everyday by our newfound powers.

Just consider one relatively small new world we have created. Many days as I scroll through Facebook, I am filled with envy and irritation at people’s posts; self-doubt in the face of their successes; despair at the ideas and priorities of some friends, and their abuses of their power to broadcast them. I wonder if it is wrong to experience compassion fatigue as I am bombarded with updates on illnesses and emergencies, deaths, breakups, depressions, and job losses – not to mention the neverending barrage of armchair activism. I use the “unfriend”, the “hide”, and I consider an exodus from this spastic microcosm of bare acquaintances and husks of old friendships. But the draw of connection, the instinct not to abandon people to anonymous has-been-friend status, is too strong. I know it is too much for me, but I cannot look away.

And today. Today I watch the posts pile up and I remember the times I have sat in traffic, in the mall, in church, and wondered about all the lives streaming past me: Where are they going? What are they worried about? What are they looking forward to? What makes their faces light up and the pitch of their voices rise to talk about? Today, I feel that I can know. Snowball fights, babies, home-cooked meals, hard-won health goals, all the moments that make up the lives people live for, all the ordinary marvels of a day well-made, celebrated and shared – I wonder if the vulnerability of joy isn’t peeking out from behind the rugged, Stoic individualism Americans thought we had to live up to, laughter, light, and the things we love splashing without ceremony across each other’s screens. I do not know if the jokes shared to cheer a friend with cancer are more comic or tragic, but they are there, they are not indifference, they are all of us warring against loneliness together, and I think that to fight and fail in a hundred such battles is to win a war if we can only stand, shaking, to foolishly seek each other out once more. My breath is caught by the beauty of vacations and hikes, dinner parties and family reunions. The very sites of God’s revelation are the answer, where they are going, and even the comment-squabbles take on a Muppet-like, happy character with all this life going on, this is the world, this is time, this is life. Am I really entitled to such a God’s-eye view over all the people I’ve met? I do not know, I only know it is too much for me, and I cannot look away.