Blaming the tool

 

The Internet

It won’t take but a few more sentences before this post becomes ironic.

I feel betrayed by the Internet. Technically impossible, I know. The Internet isn’t a living organism with intention; much less is it capable of the kind of complex consciousness necessary for betrayal. It has made me no promises, and therefore cannot have failed in those promises. It is not human, but rather is a tool for humans to use. Like guns. And we all know that guns don’t kill people. Tools are inanimate, they are without value or purpose until we assign value and implement purpose. A stick laying on the ground is just a stick; but an ape may use that stick to scratch his back, or capture ants. The stick has not changed. When a tool has not served us the way we expected, it has not betrayed us. I cannot blame the tool nor the toolmaker, but the tool user.

It is easier to blame the tool.

It won’t take but a few more sentences before this post becomes self-indulgent.

I got word today that my friends in the Peace Corps will be, instead of returning home in August, making their way to China for another eighteen months of service. The announcement made me want to cry. And it remembered to me that night over two years ago when they first told me and my husband that they would be shipping out earlier than expected. Instead of a couple of months left with them, we discovered we had only a precious few weeks. That night, we heard over dinner. I was able to look them in their eyes and tell them how much I would miss them, how proud I was of them. I was able to hug my friends and appreciate their proximity, their warmth, like the souvenirs they were about to become. By holding them closer, by meeting their eyes, by sharing dinner and conversation, I was able to appreciate with greater intensity all the reasons I would miss them.

The announcement of their intentions toward China came by broadcast e-mail, as part of my subscription to their blog. The announcement, like the one over dinner that preceded it by two years, affects me and our friendship profoundly. Delivered without dinner, without hugs, without eye contact. Even without the use of my name or my husband’s name.

My friends did not mean to slight me. I know they did not. And I don’t think they are inconsiderate. I love them, and so must be satisfied blaming the tool.

It won’t take but a few more sentences before this post becomes uncompromising.

Friendships today are conducted by shorthand. Rather than hear about the triumphs of buying a house, or about the stress of visiting the ER through the careful writing of a letter or e-mail, or through the immediacy of a phone call, we know our friends through their posts on Twitter, on Facebook, or through their text messages. Sound bytes, microblogs, shorthand for their lives, their victories, their worries, their romances, their genius.

Logging on to Facebook for the first time in several weeks this morning, I discovered that one of my friends in Connecticut had made significant progress in buying a new house – significant progress that he’d been able to share through short but regular updates of his Facebook status. I had been wondering for weeks about the purchase; and only this morning realized that I was only out of the loop because I’d been avoiding Facebook intentionally. And when I saw that so many of his friends had been following his progress, I felt vaguely jealous of their connection to his life.

I had been avoiding Facebook because I disagree with its premise, and the premise of all social networking sites: that friendships can be carried on by broadcast. When I post to Twitter, or when I update my status on Facebook, I am not really communicating with someone, I am communicating with no one directly, and thereby with everyone. My friend posted updates about his house-hunting, and the only reason I didn’t see them was because I hadn’t checked in. Is it my fault for not checking, or is it his fault for not communicating with me directly? (Is it my fault still for writing this blog?)

It is easier to blame the tool. But can we? I hadn’t called my friend, I hadn’t e-mailed him in weeks (I’m writing this instead of e-mailing him now). It wasn’t that I’d stopped caring, it was that I let the more immediate, the more present issues of my life suffocate out my intention to keep in touch. It doesn’t take long to post on Facebook or Twitter, which is why it remains a popular way to maintain or build friendships. If I join in the ruckus online, I wouldn’t need to feel disconnected. Or not entirely disconnected. There are still no real hugs online. No dinners. No looking in each other’s eyes during life-shaking conversations.

Necessity has many times called for me to conduct my friendships over long distances. One of my greatest friendships – with the fellow buying the house – was begun online and has survived a decade there. One of my best friends moved across the country within a year of our first getting to know one another. I have friends who have moved to Mexico, friends who have joined the Peace Corps, and a marriage that often relies on long-distance connections. When I use the Internet to strengthen these relationships, the tool serves me well. Or, more accurately, I use the tool to the greatest benefit.

Friendship by broadcast, though, friendships that are conducted by reading and responding to the into-the-vacuum posts (like this one) – are these friendships? Or are they occasionally meaningful intersections? Communication and relationships have always been deep efforts in human life. The Internet makes communication and relationships appear easier. On our Facebook pages, our blogs and microblogs, are we supporting one another in our victories and adventures, in our mishaps and tragedies, or are we cheering from the sidelines, sometimes only for a moment, for the span of 160 characters?

I can use this stick to fetch ants for my breakfast, or I can use it to avoid touching them. When a tool helps me accomplish something previously impossible, but prevents me from doing what empowered me and satisfied me before its advent, has it helped? Or has it betrayed me?

On preparing to grieve

In just under a week, I may have reason to grieve. Maybe it’s obvious, but having the opportunity to anticipate grief offers an unusual perspective on grieving. Last week, I thought I would be grieving before the weekend, but what I thought might occur was deferred. Now, I am in the position of watching events unfold again that may result in a tragic loss in my life, and I am anticipating grieving again. What do I do in the meantime, before these events unfold, before my resources are taxed by denial, anger, bargaining, and depression? Do I float in stasis, living in a kind of vigil-state; do I cook copiously so that I’ll have food for the winter of my grief; do I meditate to store other, much more precious resources; or do I go to movies, surf the Internet, play games and see friends in these days while life is still calm?

For one, I am contemplating grieving. I am trying not to intellectualize it, but I’m not sure thinking about grieving can be anything but intellectual. I was once told the body can’t remember pain; that when you hurt yourself your brain doesn’t hold onto the memory of that pain the same way that it might hold onto the aroma of your grandmother’s kitchen, the auditory memory of an argument with a loved one, or the scene of an ocean sunset. The body refuses to remember pain. Remembering pain isn’t a practical survival mechanism. For a similar reason, I don’t think you can experience grief as anything but an intellectual possibility until you are in the midst of grieving. If we could experience grief in anticipation of its arrival, how would we survive? We have to look forward to not losing things in order to fight to keep them.

Of course, inevitably, things pass. People pass. Houses are torn from the ground by tornadoes. Buildings are flooded. Volcanos erupt. And for awhile, what we knew of life becomes the casualty of the accident of change and loss. We know we all will die, that everyone we know will die, that our dogs will die, and our children will die. Perhaps selfishly, we hope that we don’t live to see it. Or, more selfishly, we keep ourselves from forming meaningful attachments out of the fear of loss, the anticipation of grief. But loss, and with it grief, will visit us all one day or another. Or next week.

Many would say I should be spending this time hopefully, with a stern sort of resolution that I will have no reason to grieve. It is, after all, hardly a positive affirmation to say what I say at the opening of this post. As much as I’d like to justify my position, as much as I’d like to defend myself against the accusations that I’m here creating my own reality, I can only say that it occurs to me that preparing for what could be a very long journey has never seemed impractical. One packs one’s bags, after all, when one anticipates the road ahead will linger across several horizons.

Does that mean we should accept loss? Probably. Or maybe we should “rage, rage against the dying of the light” (thank you, Dylan Thomas)? If we accept loss, will we still experience grief? If we rage against loss, will grief be easier, or harder? At some point, weeping is all we will have to offer. What is the best way into that? How can we love the light while it dies; and mourn it without losing all hope?

I know what I will grieve if grief comes, and I know no one will ask me to relent in my grieving. Yet, I also wonder this: for what will I grieve? For a tragedy that struck someone else (for this is not my own personal tragedy; I am not facing losing my life), or for my own loss? Do I mourn for my neighbors in North Dakota whose homes are filled with ice and water? Do I mourn for neighbors who are laid-off during this great financial cataclysm? I sympathize with them, and I reach out to whom I can. But mourning, real mourning, is for personal loss. After 9/11, most of us mourned the loss of safety, the breaking of our fragile bubble of security; and we mourned the idea of all those who lost their lives. But we did not mourn the way we might after our dog died, or our grandmother, or our father, or the way we would have if we knew someone walking through those towers that morning. Always, it is the gap in our own lives, the absence, the sudden space, that causes us grief. Grief, then, is meant for us and for us alone, as individual humans who face loss. My grief will not be for the loss of someone’s life, but for the loss of someone in my life.

Does that make it self-indulgent? Or is it like healing after a physical wound? We may be tended by nurses or parents or spouses, but it is our own bodies that need to heal. Sympathy from others, tenderness, baked goods or other gifts may act as bandages for that loss, but I will be alone with my broken bones, waiting on them to mend. How do I prepare my body for that? Are there immunizations to fortify my psyche?

In the end, I have more questions than answers. Maybe we always have more questions than answers, and that is why death is sublime – fearful, awe-ful, inevitable, and that thing we most want to avoid looking on. The end of a life, the loss of a house, the crushing blow of a natural disaster are all encounters with God, after all, in the same way that miracles and revelations are. We must stand witness to that over which we have no power, no control, and to which we are all finally subject. The human mind answers the sublime with fear and with questioning; it answers God the same way; it answers death the same way.

I have a few days to ponder my questions before they may go mute, dumb before tragedy. I will prepare the way with my questions, and reassure myself knowing there are no answers.