Every one of us has examples of people in or around our lives that have been disappointing or turned out to be someone other than who we thought they were. This was a rare thing back in the day when I was growing up but not anymore. Before there was this connection to the entire world through the internet there were friends we actually knew and didn't want to hurt or disappoint. Back then you would have to pick up a telephone and dial a number you knew by heart to have a conversation with someone you would actually see and talk to in person at some point making civil behavior important. Not having a portal to the world kept most of us from knowing just how many levels of human scum there actually are and their names we would never know.
With the onset of the internet, people can shout and scream about things they barely have scant knowledge of from sources with zero credibility and they can spew that ignorance to other people who they do not know and never will making the entire exercise of social media one of the most embarrassing wastes of time for all who participate including, by the way, me and this blog post.
With the onset of the internet, people can shout and scream about things they barely have scant knowledge of from sources with zero credibility and they can spew that ignorance to other people who they do not know and never will making the entire exercise of social media one of the most embarrassing wastes of time for all who participate including, by the way, me and this blog post.
It was something, maybe a moment surrounded by a bad mistake I'd made, an epiphany, it was forty some odd years ago maybe during one of those rare unmedicated weekends that I discovered at least half of all people in this world actually suck. We didn't have headlines to inflame the rhetoric written by fake journalists or internet mobs. Anarchy and rioting only happened in 3rd world countries and would never have been tolerated even by a liberal political party here in the US. That's all changed now and there is no shame for those taking part in it here.
I began this blog sometime after finding out that my father who I had only met a couple of times decades ago, had passed away. To this day after much research, I still do not know where he was laid to rest nor do I know the names of my half brothers and sisters that I would love to meet one day. But the information in cases like this often results in the same never-ending circles leading back to where I started. My intention was to give someone who is important to me but clearly doesn't realize it, a way to know more about me in the event of my passing than I know about my own father. While the exercise may well fall short of my goal, it's here just in case and I sure wish I had a way like this to "get to know," who my father was, the things he thought about and were important to him, just some stuff like that.
One thing I DO know about my father and it's ironic I suppose is that he was a no-nonsense kind of guy. According to some of his shipmates on the USS Coral Sea where he served the country in Vietnam, he had a giant heart of gold, was the greatest friend, and would seriously get on your ass for being or doing something stupid that got you in a jam. He did not suffer fools well and when his crew on the ship got into trouble he would back them up to ten thousand percent, then take them aside and ream them out if they deserved it. One said you didn't want to get on his bad side.. Point is, my father would not have tolerated this newfound internet life most people fill their time with today. This all sounds very familiar to me and we could have had some pretty lively talks about it had we spent time together before he passed. But we'll see each other again one day and maybe we'll talk then. But I digress..
I've deleted Twitter, stopped posting on Instagram, and the last to go is going to be Facebook where I have 5,000 "friends," and don't actually know even 1 of them. The back and forths some time ago on FB forced me into realizing even the people I had actually met and knew personally, I really didn't know much about at all. I think there is such a thing as knowing too much about someone because the more I saw the more disappointed I became. So I deleted about 900 names on my FB "friend," list, then repopulated the list with those with similar interests only in photography, art, and the visual stuff that used to keep me upbeat and looking forward to brighter days before my mom passed away in November. I thought I could trick myself into finding those passions again that I used to have and maybe even find a new one but it hasn't really happened like that and Facebook will be the next and final "un-sociable media," platform to go when I'm certain my connection to other people in general just isn't in the cards for me.
The quality of people's character cannot be assessed from a computer screen or the internet, and the likelihood of me ending up annoyed or pissed off increases exponentially with whatever time I spend on one. My conclusion is that in order to regain any meaningful connection to people in general, I'm going to have to find a way to go way back in time when folks actually met and knew each other on a personal level without a cell phone or constant connection to the internet. My definition of a friend comes from a time before the internet was ever thought about and the fact I can count my real friends on one hand assures me that those old traditional character requirements are still in place exactly where they should be. I'm in a place now where mistakes hardly even get close and I can attribute that to the fine art limiting my exposure to folks in general and realizing just how extremely short life actually is not wanting to waste any more of my time.
There are some good people out there I'm certain there are, just as I am certain the longer one spends on the internet the less likely they are to find them.. My preference is to be completely alone instead of having thousands of fake friends on a computer and to just forge ahead to "be right and to do right," as mom told me just before she went to heaven.
So the "long goodbye" that has been in progress since November 16, 2019, continues and if by chance the 3 or 4 actual friends I do have remain till the very end, I will consider myself to be the lucky one. And for those who won't be there till the end, I'm even luckier still by your absence.
May God keep his hand on your shoulder and guide you through your journey.
May God keep his hand on your shoulder and guide you through your journey.
Warsh your hands.
Wear a mask.
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