on email
as i thought more about what tnh and gibran (and other sages) advocated about talking and communication, i wondered about my use (and abuse) of email. what was my desired behavior on email? no doubt i was happy to use it for the fact that the world has shrunk considerably as a result. but how much use was too much use? and did it do more harm than good? did it allow us more freedom to hurt/to say more and think less? did it do enough good to balance that effect? as these questions filled my mind, i became more and more concerned about what seemed like an entirely unnecessary advancement of technology. gosh, how wrong.
with great power comes great responsibility, yes? (thank you, uncle ben!) true here just as well. email does give us great power. we can say anything in the world we wish to practically anyone in the world we can think of (practically...). wow. but then comes the responsibility part, and it is up to us to be responsible in our use of the medium, just as it is up to us to not light our neighbor's house on fire, yeah? phew.
a deeper and more satisfying realization came when i thought of email and how it aligned with my spiritual goals. with email, one has a so-much-better chance to express so-much-more love towards the world. why this was obvious to a all along but not to me - beats me. the newness of this realization still amazes - for the immense beauty in the ability email grants us to think meditatively about a person, focus our energies on them, and then write to them with all our love and attention. yes, as long as we do all of that each time we write. and to varying degrees, it is so totally doable. that's the beauty of it.
with great power comes great responsibility, yes? (thank you, uncle ben!) true here just as well. email does give us great power. we can say anything in the world we wish to practically anyone in the world we can think of (practically...). wow. but then comes the responsibility part, and it is up to us to be responsible in our use of the medium, just as it is up to us to not light our neighbor's house on fire, yeah? phew.
a deeper and more satisfying realization came when i thought of email and how it aligned with my spiritual goals. with email, one has a so-much-better chance to express so-much-more love towards the world. why this was obvious to a all along but not to me - beats me. the newness of this realization still amazes - for the immense beauty in the ability email grants us to think meditatively about a person, focus our energies on them, and then write to them with all our love and attention. yes, as long as we do all of that each time we write. and to varying degrees, it is so totally doable. that's the beauty of it.
6 comments:
I know that your post is on email, but it also makes me think about about chat and instant communications technology more generally... in particular, how chat does not (usually) afford us that us opportunity to ponder and say things in an intentional way. In addition, chat usually leads to some level of multitasking (at least in my experience), which contributes to this sort of disjointed state of existence we find ourselves in. I was just talking to a friend about this with respect to a new fictional novel by Junot Díaz (The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) that heavily uses footnotes, how those footnotes reflect this new disjointed way of thinking ... of being on one track but we're all so often constantly on another tangent as well.
We so easily get caught up in these instant technologies -- the more we use them, the more we generate more of such use... perhaps they help make us feel affirmed? wanted? popular? busy and thus important?
I'm not denying that these technologies have shaped the world very much for the better in so many ways... e.g., I can now see my nephew playing and growing thousands of miles away... but there is a balance to be struck between the constant ping and taking time to slow down, connect eye to eye, heart to heart, or even to stop multitasking and put our full focus on the task at hand. Give me a real person any day! But while so many of my dearest friends live hundreds to thousands of miles away, I am incredibly grateful for the technologies we do have. It's just a matter of harnessing them in a way that best contributes to the preservation and growth of our friends.
i am in complete agreement with all of your comment, bb :).
i am glad, however, that the mystery of email's splendors has been resolved :).
interesting point about footnotes, bb. i should check out this book.
Yeah, it was the first time I've ever seen someone use footnotes in a fictional novel. The notes are very erudite and sometimes go on for pages. An innovative approach, I thought. This book won the Pulizer Prize. It's very much about Dominican culture in the U.S. and also interesting in that it shifts point of view between multiple characters, which more and more writers seem to be doing these days. Let me know if do read it whether you like it.
but adu, it's a non-fiction book. how will you read it? ;)
in fact, it's fiction, not non-fiction. that's what makes the use of footnotes so revolutionary.
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