"I love your darkness cloaked in light. The way your beauty simultaneously surpasses and conspires with my imagination. How seemingly contradictory your idiosyncrasies are, yet how your actions never betray your thoughts. That every movement has purpose and life. There's fear in your eyes, in your heart, but you have to look closely. You have to be allowed to see it. Your absolute impossibility is astounding and terrifying and necessary. Tell me; how do you exist?"
Sunday, 22 March 2009
Sunday, 15 March 2009
Communication is Key
Friendship. A plethora of platitudes (found, for the most part, on fridge magnets and tea coasters) tell us that friendship should be treasured, clung on to and-ironically this is the one that is always said with the most conviction-fought for. So when was the last time you and your best friend, your confidant, your kindred spirit sat down and had a conversation about something meaningful without relying on there being a screen (a computer screen if we're talking specifics) between you?
The 21st Century has changed the way we see our friends, the Facebook generation has simultaneously expanded and limited our ability to communicate with each other. Remember your playground boyfriend? He's now seen every single photo of every wild night out since '06. The beauty and the innocence of your childhood romance is shattered via a tagging system. Your closest friends send you wall messages on your birthday and "buy" you a drink (some pixels of varying colours) and thinks that's enough. Whatever happened to letters? Whatever happened to taking the time to have an actual conversation, rather than spending an hour exchanging emoticons and meaningless pokes?
So what's the crux of the matter? A multitude of reasons I'm sure, each more complex and analytical than the last. I'm not one for generalisations. Yet people don't seem to want to make the effort anymore. Or, on a different, perhaps less condemning and slightly more melancholy vein of thought, have we simply forgotten how to communicate without some kind of crutch?
Shelley tells us that life is "Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery". We're all so scared of our own potential. Of freeing ourselves from whatever it is that's holding us back. What would happen if instead of sending a text (as a side-note, the politics of texting is one of the most convoluted things in the world) to ask someone out, we did it in person? It'd be daunting and exhilarating, life-affirming and so much more than anything 140 characters could ever offer. I'm guilty of all these things just as much as anyone else is. I write letters, but rarely. There's so much life behind a letter. Thought processes, scribbles of excitement, the way a persons handwriting reflects a part of who they are.
Take a tip from the Romantics (crazy kids that they were) and take a step into the unknown.
You might just like it.
The 21st Century has changed the way we see our friends, the Facebook generation has simultaneously expanded and limited our ability to communicate with each other. Remember your playground boyfriend? He's now seen every single photo of every wild night out since '06. The beauty and the innocence of your childhood romance is shattered via a tagging system. Your closest friends send you wall messages on your birthday and "buy" you a drink (some pixels of varying colours) and thinks that's enough. Whatever happened to letters? Whatever happened to taking the time to have an actual conversation, rather than spending an hour exchanging emoticons and meaningless pokes?
So what's the crux of the matter? A multitude of reasons I'm sure, each more complex and analytical than the last. I'm not one for generalisations. Yet people don't seem to want to make the effort anymore. Or, on a different, perhaps less condemning and slightly more melancholy vein of thought, have we simply forgotten how to communicate without some kind of crutch?
Shelley tells us that life is "Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery". We're all so scared of our own potential. Of freeing ourselves from whatever it is that's holding us back. What would happen if instead of sending a text (as a side-note, the politics of texting is one of the most convoluted things in the world) to ask someone out, we did it in person? It'd be daunting and exhilarating, life-affirming and so much more than anything 140 characters could ever offer. I'm guilty of all these things just as much as anyone else is. I write letters, but rarely. There's so much life behind a letter. Thought processes, scribbles of excitement, the way a persons handwriting reflects a part of who they are.
Take a tip from the Romantics (crazy kids that they were) and take a step into the unknown.
You might just like it.
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