Meditation for April 17th
You Have No Idea How To Be Human Anymore.
When our ancestors began gathering, they formed small, tight-knit villages for safety and to form families. After foraging for food, they sat around the fire, telling stories to teach morals and keep each other entertained. A lot has happened since then. Most of us have moved from small villages to cramped cities.
Even though millions of people live in the same city together, no one knows each other. People rely on social media and texts to connect and try to plug into people. The more upper-class the neighborhood is, the less the neighbors know each other. Places we had to go to talk to someone now have automated services, so we never even have to hear another human being. We can order anything and have it delivered to our door, and we don’t even have to open the door for the person. We can wait till we see the taillights before opening the door and scooping up our delivery.
If people want to argue, they don’t have to be in front of anyone to do it; we have social media and forums to state our points of view. The wall of not being in front of someone making these claims makes people bold, even rude; if they did it in person, they might get their clocks cleaned for saying what they said online. The instant gratification and audience these online forums offer make the time it used to take to understand the context and gravity of any given situation fall by the wayside in favor of immediate responses.
If you put your entire life on social media, I have nothing to ask you. Your entire life has already gone through my judgmental mind, so you are no longer a mystery to me, and therefore, you are boring. Then there is the perception that we are paying attention to each other’s social media, so we are aghast when someone isn’t caught up with our lives. Conversations lull since there are no mysteries left. With the homogenizing of culture, we can only draw on the hot topics of that day to talk about. We no longer teach each other things the other doesn’t know.
Don’t get me started on people who have emotional blogs about going through hard times with things like, say, cancer, being heartbroken, or not being able to find a home.
I know a lot of people who have a “who’s calling” feature on their phones, so they can see when not to pick up. They can only text. They have little to no respect for their peers, so they demand that only short, precise written messages be reached. They want to live a life void of soul and human warmth. Since they don’t have to talk to a bank teller anymore, why would they talk to their friends? Some people believe they’ve had deep, meaningful conversations by text message. They, in fact, did not. Not hearing the inflection in the voice and body language is like saying your favorite beer is O’Douls. People write differently than they talk, and they text differently than they write.
When someone dies, we insert our story into the deceased’s story. They express their breakups with vague online posts that would make an emo band in the early 2000s embarrassed to sing. If you become angry with someone, you unfollow them at best or unfriend them at worst—all of which stinks of a lack of direct communication. Maybe if you see them in real life, you give them the cold shoulder, and they have to guess why you aren’t talking to them.
Now we have a generation of people who don’t know how to express themselves, ask for what they need or want, or discuss with someone who disagrees with them. They think ghosting is a form of power and believe the other person should be able to understand the problem without words. We can sit around a fire after eating, but no one is telling stories; we are all too scared to speak.
Prayer
Technical Paradise
Wrap me up in your binary blanket.
Protect me from others’ straightforward communication.
Except when I’m on the Xbox, and I have to let my team know I’m going left after a breach & clear.
If I could, then I wouldn’t have to talk out loud.
I work in customer service, and while I say all the nice things out loud,
I’m screaming hateful things silently.
When my phone rings, I jump with anxiety.
When my girlfriend wants to have talks about our relationship
I sent a long Facebook message with heart emojis all over.
Keep me from hearing a person’s voice.
I don’t want to hear someone talk about what they’ve been up to when they could have just put that on Facebook.
That’s why I go to movies with my friends.
Amen.
Craft
If someone wants to talk to you, point out that you have boundaries and need a person-to-person conversation.
Firstly, you and the other person must sit in chairs facing each other, knees to knees.
Secondly, the first time each person speaks, they must introduce themselves with the following formula:
A. First name, middle name, nickname, last name
B. Of what birth city
C. Any title, like Jr. Esq. or Witch
D. Occupation
E. Religion
F. Disease
For example, I would say, “Hello, my name is David Everett ‘Woodchuck’ Rizzo Fisher of Eugene, and I am the first of this name. I am an Internet sensation, a spiritual handyman, and a minister. I am a pagan, atheist, bisexual, alcoholic, and cancer survivor. How’re you?”
Before any conversation can begin, you and your conversational partner must give each other three likes, three dislikes, and three reasons to be grateful to each other for 10 minutes.
Now, a 10-minute meditation where you two stare into each other’s eyes, climbing into the subconscious, into the subconscious of your talking companion, and see that a thin spider web connects all. God is a spider.
Now the conversation may begin.
Goal
Get up and talk to someone about something. Express your feelings to one other person, face-to-face, to someone, for what you need, even if you are convinced they will say no. Don’t text, leave a VM, or email/direct message; talk face-to-face. Stop being too busy to hang out with people in real life.
When someone dies, it is time to get people together and remember the deceased. It’s not about you alone; it’s about the soul-sucking. Don’t be a soul-sucking attention getter and think you are so alone or special.
Tell someone a story. Better yet, listen to someone tell a story.