I always stop by Facebook at some point each evening, aching to say something amazingly poignant or terribly witty. And yet when I arrive there, I find myself looking into something I don’t recognize; something I never felt a part of to begin with.
I never thought of myself as a private person. I have thought of myself as shy by circumstance, or even cerebral, but never private. My life is as though it was one of those oversized children’s books; the kind with large pictures trying to get the point across. The text is bold, and readable. But you still have to know how to read it. The words are meaningless to the illiterate, and all that’s left are the pictures. These types of fleeting moments you share with your peripheral social network are like this; quick, short, to the point. But they lack the real depth the human experience requests of us. That moment of clarity, of instant connection, is what we ache for. The slight graze of a hand, or a bumped knee. Quiet breathing in the dark next to a faceless shape. Our cyber reality is cold, and sterile. As though you were sitting on an examining table; with the paper sheets and alcohol swabs. Under the harsh fluorescent lights, we all squint. At the end of the day, we are all scratching to get into something we don’t understand. All in the hopes our actions go un-noticed, that someone is staring at our obvious pictures.
But there is a lot to be said for those who can read the text in front of them; for those who yearn to learn more. Reading beyond the random outbursts or the status updates. Beyond the check-ins and the tags, there are people. People quietly living in an existence being witnessed by others, and yet the faux reality we’ve created is unlike ourselves. There are only images; a pictorial rhetoric that speaks in short run-on sentences. Like quick jabs with a knife, they are there and gone in an instant.
Read between the images. Look for the text, when all you can see are visuals. Our quiet nature is only as loud as we allow it. Our reality is only as real as we make it.
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