Feel Like a Number

I read the other day that Google is closing down its effort at a Facebook clone, an effort that never really captured anyone's imagination the way the marketing folks had hoped it would. I've joined so many social networks over the years I've lost track (and for the most part also interest). In the passage of time since signing up I've discovered I no longer have (assuming I ever did) any idea what some of them do or are; I've rattled around here on the big blue marble for a shade more than sixty-six years so maybe I could and should leave well enough alone.

This is who we are. A sentient, self-aware species yearning to be individuals, right along with everyone else surrounding us. Each of us, heck, ALL of us, all seven billion or so on this planet, want to be able to rush to the shore or scream at the sky 'hey! look at me!' 

If there is a God, how does He (or She; how ironic would that be to learn God the Father is actually God the Mother? And stuff, like picking on your sibling, taking the last cookie, or not making your bed, is REALLY the important stuff while faith and food works are as may be? What a hoot.) possibly keep track of us all? 

I understand I should look to the lilies of the field who neither toil nor weave and I'd realize that not one swallow falls to earth without His knowledge but am I the only one who has days like those of the fisherman who prays, 'Lord, Your ocean is so large and my boat is so small'? 

I spend more time online in conversation or interaction than in so doing with real people, though at least in theory, the ones online are as real as those in the flesh and in the here and now. My children are very much at home in this Brave New World, barely remembering the quaint old days of dial-up and now part of the migratory electrons that are so many virtual meeting places. Each of us can stand alone, but it's easier to stand alone when you are together. 

Maybe that's part of what separates us from the beasts (and all this time I thought it was these nifty thumbs), our knowledge of our finite future. The realization that tomorrow will dawn for some, though not all, of us and that there will be a day when the last person who knows of our existence, themselves, passes from this earth and we cease to be part of the communal context and conscience and become forgotten. 

And someone someplace scrolls over whatever has replaced what we now call this community of connectivity and marvels at the primitive beauty of that which was left behind.
-bill kenny