Thursday, September 11, 2014
Are we connecting?
There’s a whole new world of networking and socializing, which is confusing, as the question is, are we really connecting? Yes we are……..virtually. It’s like connecting with God and we can’t see it but at least we believe it. So too in the social media we see it we would like to believe we are connected. How do we create this belief, we twitter our thoughts, Upload stuff on Face Book, or the other many virtual connectors in cyber space, get a couple of likes and some comments and feel good about it, that many saw it.
To the extent even where we can
and should feel connected, which is with family, we disconnect and connect
through these mediums. In reality we are so disconnected, that we want to just
feel connected and don’t ‘really’ connect. In the good old days of connecting
with far away loved ones had more of a feel, with letters which we termed as ‘snail
mail’. Maybe the feel was to the snail pace which brought the joy. What we
thought was ‘fast connect’ is not really connecting with any emotions. A joke
recently shared on Facebook, made sense, it read as follows: My Internet went
down so walked down to meet my folks, they really seem to be nice people.
Today with instant reach the feel
is not the same, and we would like to believe it is better. Memories like
birthdays or special occasions where we want or should be connecting it is now
a greeting over an email or through the virtual connectors. Even though there
are ‘free mediums’ to make a call, it is disconnecting and connecting with one
liners over social media. Some of the social mediums there is an option where
you can state your birthday, and it announces your birthday to your contacts.
So it is actually telling your contacts, “Hey it’s my birthday, please wish
me”.
Festive occasions which meant
buying cards, penning in the greetings, walking to a post office and mailing
them, is now a click; which in reality is a trick. We are tricking our minds
that we are sending greetings. So we end up tricking even emotions, where we
click our whole database of contacts and send a one liner or a copy paste of a
greeting, and feel we have wished everyone. Do we really feel we have wished
anything for anyone? The feel of excitement and joy of connecting with long
lost or distanced friends even if not spoken to each other for years is not
there anymore, despite all the techno-connectors.
Technology may have done great
for businesses and commerce. It remains only ‘business oriented’, and on the
individual level it has only distanced people, where the medium is used to feel
we are in touch. Touch is lacking is so bad, that people seek happiness in
displaying their daily lives over social media, with a hope someone would reach
out to them. They do get the reach with likes and comments, but is that what
they are really seeking? An old saying holds true, ‘A friend of everyone, is a
friend of no one’. So we have tons of friends in all the social media outlet,
and in reality no friend with whom there can be an outlet of expressing our
emotions.
We just have to limit, if not
disconnect many mediums we are using to connect and reconnect. As good as
unlearning to learn something you already know. Connect and reach out and
touch. Use all techno social mediums if need be to express and not just to
impress with pictures of your holidays and forwards of what you like. Some if
not many or all, may just like you, and want to know how you doing, and not
what you are doing. They may just want to know that you care and you mean it.
Take time out to connect with emotions, which may not happen with poetic or
motivational posts.
Sometimes two friends could
really meet and not say a word to each other, but yet feel so happy they were
with each other. Are we connecting or disconnecting or what is happening,
isolating.
Comments:
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It's great to read your blog after a long time, but i dont agree with you. Bcoz internet has actually helped me connect and i guess its the way we perceive it! :)
Hey Sunny.... you are bang on target regarding connecting through social media and technology tools....people feel that they are connecting. ...when in reality there is a total disconnect. Genuine relationships can be built only through emotional connectivity and emotional intelligence otherwise it remains superficial and short-lived.
In today's world of instant gratification and indifferent attitude people do not realize the meaning of true happiness and the majority seem to go with the flow.
We are becoming a planet of zombies with hardly anybody making an effort to inject the truth or genuineness in any relationship or activity.
This is becoming a real challenge to the outnumbered genuine minority who are eventually eliminated from the system or isolated, leading to tragic stories.
In today's world of instant gratification and indifferent attitude people do not realize the meaning of true happiness and the majority seem to go with the flow.
We are becoming a planet of zombies with hardly anybody making an effort to inject the truth or genuineness in any relationship or activity.
This is becoming a real challenge to the outnumbered genuine minority who are eventually eliminated from the system or isolated, leading to tragic stories.
Agree! This blog post is totally relevant in today's age. We are all guilty of displaying such behaviour in some form or the other.
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