Join Me?

I think I’ve figured out why I am so reluctant to comment on FB posts these days. I used to be able to get along without having opinions about things. Not anymore.

I used to be able to appreciate things my friends posted, like poetry, or silly video shenanigans, or pictures of their latest adventures. Those posts didn’t require any opinion from me, other than admiration, or laughter, or commiseration.

Now, I start to write a reply, and find my fingers stalling on the keys. Even friends I admire and love are starting to post things from biased or questionable sources. Even people whom I know have rock-solid common sense are starting to teeter on the edge of blame and recrimination.

Everybody has been spending so much time in the arid desert of Zoom and Google Hangouts that they’ve stopped noticing the time lag of these tinny, electronically filtered voices with no depth or resonance. Maybe they never did notice the way the air connects us and interweaves the sound-waves to magnify and bless them.  Even if they didn’t, though, I’ll bet they miss it. Sounds have character, resonance, nuance. They vibrate in our chests, and tickle our nose-hairs. They rollick, or they tremble on the edge of hearing and make us say, “Hush! Listen!”

People have been looking at nothing but tiny faces in boxes on a hissing screen for long enough to be able to nod in recognition when I mention that after a while, our eyes hurt from trying to see past the screen to the way light falls on the other side of shadow; our foreheads knotted up from peering past the angle of screen, straining to discern depth and perspective in the drape of cloth, the layers of stacked books, the shimmer off the surface of water in a glass, or the shine of kindness in a human eye.

We know it must be there— we remember it. We feel it when it’s missing, even if we aren’t sure what it is we miss. Our eyes and ears know, and our hearts, and the soles of our feet. The world needs dimension and scope. The air needs our mingled voices on the wind. The light needs our eyes to glance off it and bounce all the way to the horizon.

Still, we have to do our best, somehow. Just…… let’s not forget. Let’s remember that we’re making do; making the best of a bad deal. We’re carrying on.

I’m trying not to get used to the missing resonance, or settle for the flat, filtered imitation light. I’m trying not to let the images on the screen persuade me that they represent what’s real, or true. I’ve started reading books that are printed on paper. I’m holding on to the real, the immediate, the present, and keeping faith with my own best judgment.  I’m remembering what I know, and measuring it against what I don’t know.

Join me?