(Sorry. The usual funny and cynical picture I start off each blog with cannot be found. I can't seem to understand iPhoto, yet. So instead, you are treated to a recent picture of me with my two beautiful daughters, Lauren (15, on the left) and Lindsay (13, on the right). The ugly guy in the middle is in the witness protection program. He has no name. Only a Facebook picture.)As I sit in the airport terminal, waiting on my delayed flight to Houston for another 2-week round of gainful employment, I have decided to work on something that has been long neglected: My Blog. As most of you know, my last posting was rather long with the story of Daniel, the son of friend who has passed on and beat us to the portal of Heaven. If you missed it, (the post, not Heaven) it is worth your time. The story is compelling, true and impacted my life. Many of you responded with similar words of how it impacted you.
I remind you of this because of my next post. I learned much about Daniel because of an update in Facebook. So my latest installment of pontification will be on that very subject.
Facebook is such an amazing phenomenon. It has impacted people from all stripes of society. It connects friends and business people alike, relinking old acquaintances and has seemed to revolutionize the way we communicate. While the number of people that have joined the legions of Facebookers is truly astonishing, few have stopped to ask the most pressing of questions.
Should the phenomenon of Facebook be happening at all?
Like a Blooming Onion at Outback, this question is at once delectable and tantalizing, oily and too hot to eat at once. It definitely cannot be eaten quickly, lest a burnt mouth and clogged arteries slow the progress. The question has recently kept me up at night, pondering its many layers and levels. Let me start by unpacking my Facebooking experience.
My children, as with most children in this age, are probably over saturated with technology and the need to know. They have Mac computers, are internet savvy, text on their cell phones with great alacrity and can program my DVR better than I can. Homework research takes a fraction of the time it did for me when I needed to write a paper in 9th grade (that's 1979 for those of you trying to do the math.)
"Dad, Dad! I just have to be on Facebook! ALL my friends are? Can I get an account?" Or so my recollection goes. "What is Facebook and who really cares?" Yes, children can be as persistent as that nagging head cold or a leaky faucet. So I, like the good over-protective father that I am, checked it out. In order for me to even "check it out," I had to create an account before I looked under the hood. I felt I did my due diligence and spent quite a bit of time "checking it out."
Perhaps too much time.
I was amazed! People I had not heard of for many years somehow found me and wanted to be my "friend." Valuable time that I could have spent elsewhere was now consumed by this desire to check out old friends and see what they were up to. Old college roomates, ex-girl friends, forgotten business collegues and old church members suddenly were found and presented themselves for inspection.
WOW! What a way to catch up on 20 years of history that passed our relationships by. Some people I knew about and others I had not seen in over 2 decades. That was how I learned about Daniel, the subject of my last post. It was through his father's Facebook page and a seeming inconsequential remark about missing Daniel. What I learned shook me to the core and left an indelible impression.
And so it went on as I learned much about my past alliances and friendships, many created long ago under very different circumstances. Different times and places, myself a different person. Picture and comments, links to websites and Status Updates gave me, sometimes, a clear snapshot of what that person had been doing for so long.
Marriages, growing families, world travels and business projects all performed to create a tapestry of their lives. Some I wished I had kept in contact. Some I was glad that I had not. But most made me feel a little more complete, like the resumption of a good book, put down in the middle to finish later.
And before I had said "Yes" to my girls becoming a Facebook member, I found myself swept up in the vortex know as Facebook.
Facebook is a sword that cuts both ways. I find that it somehow satisfies a voyeuristic tendency to be in the know about someone without them even knowing that I know. I can learn many things about them and their past just by reading their Profile, looking at their pictures or seeing who their friends are. I now have many more Facebook friends that were once old friends of mine, just by looking to see who their Facebook Friends are. It's kinda creepy, in a good sort of way.
But at the same time, it reminds me that I am no longer in close contact or proxmitiy with them. With some I was very close. But due to the modern problem of moving around the country alot, I have lost touch with and both they and I moved on. I regret not keeping up some of the friendships, people who added much to my life. They were there during formative stages of my growth, both physically, mentally and spiritually. I see the posted pictures of their lives and wish that I was in one of them, a reminder that my presence mattered, even if long ago.
But time waits for no man and the path many of us take is in different directions, the result of the leading of God and sometimes, our rebellions.
So I guess I see Facebook as a complex subject, a natural outworking of our post-modern times. A place to contact others without really saying much, a way to stay informed anonomously and without obligation. I also see it as new platform to let many of my friends know what is going on, right now, in my life. A way for both of us to live vicariously through our words and pictures. A vehicle in which I can be remembered and prayed for and thought of, if only for the span of a "What are you doing now" moment.
So look and comment, but always, reply and pray for.
Posting on my new-look Facebook page, (not sure I like yet),
Traveler
