Net Intimacy

There is - I think - a deep human longing for intimacy. However, given today's fractured society where everyone bustles along with ear buds plugged in or cell phones lodged between ear and shoulder, it seems we are even less connected than ever. I noted the look on a passenger in a car the other day as her driver chatted away to someone else while toodling along the highway - it was sad! Families are scattered from Michigan to Maine and Boston to Boca and often neighbors don't even know each others' names.

So we turn to Facebook! I have noted with growing alarm the number of intimate details that have been revealed on people's FB page - arguments with lovers and spouses, pain and grief over life situations and all nature of political, moral and ethical views. Not that it is inappropriate to express one's views, au contraire! I am happy people can express views and have a language for their feelings. What concerns me is that those same people (or me too) might not have an intimate friend to sit beside, or whose shoulder they might weep upon, or with whom they secretly confide a new, budding love. Have we lost that?

There are times the all three of us will be in the home office all working away on our respective computers - and not saying a word to each other! OOOO! The family that 'nets together, gets together! When I notice it (not always because I am focused on work, or my son on his homework), I try to interrupt the separation and bring us all into conversation. But I worry about others, about the strange mixture of aloneness and the loss of boundaries that exposes one's innermost self to the passing public. I fear that my 11 year-old son might grow up thinking that he is having a relationship with someone because they txt each other and that he is expressing himself because he has an array of emoticons! And I wonder if the Amish might not be so strange afer all! Reports show that suicide rates, though quadrupling in our society are lowest and staying put among the Amish and among cultures with lower technology.

And of course, as I write this, I think I had better call a close friend and talk about it!