Archive for the ‘Facebook Addiction’ Category

Staring at the Sun

Posted: January 14, 2014 in Facebook Addiction, U2 Lyrics as Message, Wisdom
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Staring at the SunI’m not the only one
Staring at the sun
Afraid of what you’d find
If you took a look inside

“Staring at the Sun” – U2

          It used to be that without my glasses I couldn’t see.  Then I got contacs.  Both helped my vision, but 20/20 sight doesn’t guarantee clarity.

We live in a really busy world.  We know this is true because we spend the majority of our day learning about the news and one another because we watch it on a screen.  Our phones, our laptops—we’re everywhere in hi-def and in real time baby. 

Yet we’re blind to some of our real defects:  Pride—an intransigent intelligence that’s always right.  Fear—standing still because we’re  too afraid we’ll fail or don’t know if we possess the disciplined changes success actually requires.   Apathy—Our permanent chair of comfort and convenience reserved for those of us who refuse to contemplate improving our lives or those around us.

 Can you even name your blindness?  This not knowing, or worse: not wanting to know.   Maybe there is something more than what lies between both your ears and behind your eyes.    What is it you choose not to see?

We are all like the books some of us used to read.  Some of us are titled with names so noble or we’re wrapped in colorful jackets so beautiful, we nearly fall into the laps of those begging to slather us with attention.  Others are like nineteenth century secret tomes with thick, dusty matte covers filled with ancient wisdom and epic adventures lived, but never imagined by others.   And yet each of us still have blank pages left that have the potential to be filled with characters, and events the mind can’t even conceive.

In our endless attempt to know more, we’ve become less.  Our lives don’t tell our stories.  Our Facebook pages and Tweets and Pinterests do.  We’re Linked In but we’re tuned out.  Tuned out of what?

Relating.

Living.

A lot of things…..….

I know.  I’m one of them.  I want to be a writer.  And possibly a photographer.  It’s hard, dare I say impossible to get your name and/or work out there without wall-papering the web with your work coupled with a few prayers.  Noticed is what we aim for. 

We spend hours of our lives now, staring at screens of alternating distractions, hoping to produce something of lasting or intrinsic value.

Always looking out, all eighteen inches of it, but never digging deep, we’ve fallen into a state of perpetual sleep walkers.  No wonder Zombies are in when it comes to entertainment.   These high-definition pasty, distorted, pie-eyed  brain-dead creatures mirror us more than we know.

We’re all staring at the sun.  This never-ending bright sunshine of glass and buzz and liquid crystal colors mesmerizing us with news and trivia and useless information.   It’s crack, and we don’t know it.  Or worse, we do but we grow peacefully comfortable as we slowly succumb to the blissful addiction of avoiding reality.

Try to break free if you can–if you dare.   Find out who you are. To really look inside yourself, you have to step out of that comfort zone!  Turn off the computer and write your bucket list today.  Because sometimes later never comes.   Especially when we’re all so incredibly busy.  Busy, staring at the sun.

Facebook’s IPO (Interesting Perspectives of Others)

Posted: May 27, 2012 in Facebook Addiction
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Photo Credit: http://www.kekeran.com/2012/05/signs-of-addiction-to-facebook.html

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.  ~Albert Einstein

      Ah, the joys of Facebook.  Who amongst us doesn’t two-time their day job by just a few hours or so in order to find out what your elementary school friends’  kids are up to, where they are currently vacationing or spending their retirement at forty,  as you allegedly work, or perhaps glean and pass on a few quotes, pictures, posters, videos, and blogs of wisdom.  Seriously, who doesn’t have time NOT TO know the comings and goings of the world wide wonderland?

Because once you know the status of your peeps, their peeps, and their peeps’ peeps, it brings you to the next most exciting part of Facebook:  The COMMENTS section.  You can always LIKE something and your “person” knows that you just internally nodded in agreement with them, as if to say “Right On”  You can write back a witty or humorous reply or my personal favorite; a politically or socially incorrect and controversial reply and then check back later and see if you are still “friends”.    You can write something stunningly profound only to be commented on by absolutely no one!  Or you can read a post, and silently ignore it and berate the fact that these people are your “friends.”  The part I like best about Facebook? Every day of the year, it is someone’s birthday, a chance to remember that this is the day God picked another amazing friend’s debut 16, 23, 45, 56, 67,  or 89 years ago.

One of the things that intrigues me the most about Facebook, besides the fact that there is a green man behind the curtain who is collecting and documenting your entire life for future sinister purposes (or so I’ve been told), is that sometimes when you try to comment or share on someone else’s wall, you are sometimes “face-slapped” with a message similar to these:

You don’t have sufficient permission to perform this action. (Since when did that stop me in real life?)

Your friend requires a permission certificate to perform this action.  (What?  How?  Where do I get that from?)

Facebook has encountered an error.  Please try again later.    (Darn it, is Zuckerman and the gang downing shots again instead of minding their servers?)

But my all-time favorite is this one:

Thanks for Your Help   Thanks for your feedback. You can Undo this action or Report it as abusive.

These messages always tick me off because I usually had something really important to say or share.  I know if I don’t do it right this minute, the opportunity will pass, and the outcome of my social media-inclined friends may be forever altered by what they didn’t get to know.

You can also post pictures of yourself as a baby, as you were in high school, after an incredible haircut or makeover, or after you dropped dozens of pounds, of which sadly I don’t think I’ll ever get the joy of posting.   Of course, we (but this is not limited to our friends’ photos of us) would never post our own ugly pictures, lest anyone get the truest impression of who we actually are.    You can post your vacations, your kids with their trophies, the biggest fish you didn’t catch, and any significant possessions you wish to make others envious of.  You can post pictures and links to causes near and dear to your heart.  You can post your life 24/7/365 in real time from the mundane to the incredulous.    You can start a page for your dog, your new baby, or the groups you are in.

And now the biggest blog in the atmosphere has gone public this week.  Before the first major media reporters finished their sentences about what a smoking hot IPO Facebook would be, there was already a wave of reports about how maybe it’s not actually worth one hundred gazillion dollars after all, since they don’t offer “product”, and there may possibly be a mass exodus if a floodgate of ads outnumber your friends’ status posts.   Investors around the world experienced the exhilaration of diving in, panic, and ultimately, were eventually subdued into accepting that it may be take more than the length of time it takes to post a comment to see if their financial decision would pay out.

The only thing I ever invested in Facebook was too much time I could have spent living my actual life somewhere else, basically doing things that were real.  Still, whether you have two or sixteen thousand and forty two  friends, alleged friends, or people you have no idea who they are on your Facebook, every now and then, in terms of sheer friendship and fact collecting, don’t you sometimes already feel like a zillionaire?

As I wrap this up, I am about to step foot bravely out in the real world without benefit of an undo or delete button as I say things and make decisions, hopefully without being reported as abusive.   Wish me luck!

Everything you can imagine is real.  ~Pablo Picasso