Did you miss me yesterday? I missed you! And why? Because someone somewhere cut a fiber optic cable and there was no internet from 9 o'clock yesterday morning until sometime in the wee hours of this morning. You know the kind of panic THAT sort of thing engenders. When did I become such a cyborg that I cannot take a deep breath without checking Facebook, or comments to this blog, or the weather once an hour? At what point did my cell phone become the equivalent of a pacemaker, so that I have anxiety attacks when I realize I've left the house without it? This is just silly.
As I lay awake this morning I pondered these and other weighty issues. How many years have these electronic invaders been running my life? What did we all do in the days when we relied on the telephone and GASP! the hand-written note to communicate? Remember when it took effort to keep in touch, so we only kept in touch with the people we actually cared two hoots about? If I remembered your birthday it was because I wrote it on my calendar in ink, and at the end of the year I transferred it onto my new calendar because you were a person who mattered in my life, not because a pink wrapped box popped up in the top right screen to tell me today was your big day. Well, here's a bulletin: I still write it in ink on my calendar, because you do, indeed, matter. Oh, I send out a "HBTY" to acquaintances, but the friends who go back (and I am grateful that there are so many of you) know who you are. I don't need a reminder.
My sons were worried about "missing their high school friends" when they went off to college. Hah! They play video games with one another across the country. They chat face-to-face on a regular basis, and get constant updates on every trivial event. And it requires zero strain on their part. I think they're missing out on something. The effort is part of the gift of friendship.
Don't get me wrong. I love being able to catch up with so many more people than I used to, and I can't tell you how much I miss my almost daily e-mails from my Dear Friend Flanagan. But at some level of my soul I was calmer yesterday. I worked on the extremely imperfect scarf I'm knitting for Son Number One in his school colors. I played the piano. I read. It was a mini-vacation. Perhaps it's one I should take voluntarily more often.
As I lay awake this morning I pondered these and other weighty issues. How many years have these electronic invaders been running my life? What did we all do in the days when we relied on the telephone and GASP! the hand-written note to communicate? Remember when it took effort to keep in touch, so we only kept in touch with the people we actually cared two hoots about? If I remembered your birthday it was because I wrote it on my calendar in ink, and at the end of the year I transferred it onto my new calendar because you were a person who mattered in my life, not because a pink wrapped box popped up in the top right screen to tell me today was your big day. Well, here's a bulletin: I still write it in ink on my calendar, because you do, indeed, matter. Oh, I send out a "HBTY" to acquaintances, but the friends who go back (and I am grateful that there are so many of you) know who you are. I don't need a reminder.
My sons were worried about "missing their high school friends" when they went off to college. Hah! They play video games with one another across the country. They chat face-to-face on a regular basis, and get constant updates on every trivial event. And it requires zero strain on their part. I think they're missing out on something. The effort is part of the gift of friendship.
Don't get me wrong. I love being able to catch up with so many more people than I used to, and I can't tell you how much I miss my almost daily e-mails from my Dear Friend Flanagan. But at some level of my soul I was calmer yesterday. I worked on the extremely imperfect scarf I'm knitting for Son Number One in his school colors. I played the piano. I read. It was a mini-vacation. Perhaps it's one I should take voluntarily more often.
RSS Feed