I just left Facebook. Again.
[ I start negative and cynical, but I go somewhere positive.]
I don’t care that you just got a pedicure.
I don’t care that you and three other friends I’ve never met are about to have a night on the town.
I don’t care what political candidate you have been led to support through your shallow, uninformed, and impetuous selection process.
I don’t care that you just drove 6 hours to attend a concert.
I don’t care care that you just started using Android, and that it’s so very different from what you’re used to.
I don’t care that you didn’t get along with your significant other today.
I don’t care that you love your family so incredibly much. I don’t even care if you don’t.
I don’t care that [you think] your grandma’s cooking is incredible.
I don’t care about the intentionally cryptic/revealing song lyrics you lifted from some random website, typos and all.
I don’t want your personal drama. I don’t want to see your mood swings unfurling down a news feed. I don’t want your incoherent, status-sized tirades. I don’t want your religious preachings and prescriptions, doled out like so much pretentious manna. I don’t want the inconsequential electronic tidbits of your life to become the secondhand memories of mine.
Don’t accuse me of apathy. What I’m doing isn’t heartless.
I am certainly willing to care about the beautiful little details of life, a unique constellation of opinions, the myriad facets of experience. But either you have to make me care, or you have to show some reciprocity to keep alive what care I already have. If you indiscriminately throw pieces of yourself at the public sphere, I hardly feel special or singled out when there’s nothing left for the private circle. In such a case, I am no more privileged than your high school classmates with whom you haven’t conversed in years, or the 800 other people on your list of “friends.”
So here’s to a phone call, a video chat, a card in the mail, a walk in the woods. Here’s to individual attention, to private friendships, and to making each other feel significant and outstanding.
For the record, I am aware of the irony and humor inherent in posting this on a personal-yet-public blog. I comfort myself in the notion that most of the stuff I publish or reblog is cause for aesthetic appreciation, humor, or challenging thought.
Life has a limited number of moments. I want to spend as few of them as possible in vicariousness. I want to replace the mundane with the meaningful.
