Feel Like a Number

Rehabbing between doctors' visits provokes introspection on my part. I was counting the number of social networks I'm a member of, and by 'social' I don't mean civil, because for the most part we're not. I was impressed with the quantity, if not the quality, of many of the 'connections.' 

This is who we are. A sentient, self-aware species yearning to be individuals, right along with everyone else. Each of us, heck with that!, 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 do They possibly keep track of us all? I know that I need only look to the lilies of the field who neither toil nor weave, and I 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 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, somewhere scrolls over whatever has replaced what we now call this community of connectivity and marvels at the primitive beauty of that which we've left behind.
-bill kenny