A Voice in the Wilderness

You know, the thought dawned on me today as I was surfing the waves of the net that the reason blogs and places like 'Facebook' and 'Myspace' have become so much an omnipresent part of our modern existence is that we all want to believe that we have a voice in the wilderness that someone will hear and respond to in some way.

No one wants to think that they are just an anonymous traveler who doesn't leave a ripple in the tidal pool when they pass.

Could be the reason that we 'network' our lives with technology to supply an immediacy that we need in order to feel that our lives have meaning beyond what we assign to ourselves.

I stop in and look at the pages of friends and strangers alike and visit the portion of their personal life that is on display in the blogs or chat rooms or web pages that fill the void of the world wide web.

Like spiders seeking to lure in their prey, each site has a hook or some sort of bait to attract our attention and hold it long enough for our presence to be registered and taken into the web presence of the person behind the technology.

Similar in many respects to the scene in the 'Wizard of Oz' where we are instructed to ignore the man behind the curtain, we are to believe that the persona on our monitor is the sum total of existence for the digital representation of life we are given.

Seldom have I seen a website that shows the undiluted truth about who a person really is. That is simply privileged information only shared with those who are close enough not to judge, pity or condemn.

If we were to present our true self, as my father says 'warts and all', I don't think we would find it quite as compelling as we do the highly varnished and photoshopped 'truth' that is shared with us on the net.

Is there such a thing as an unexamined life?

In this day and age of technological perfection at the click of a mouse, I am not sure that exists anymore. Even photographers who bring the distress and horrors of the world to our doorstep have micromanaged the images and the story to represent whatever slant or spin is the most lucrative for their career.

Perhaps the reason we blog and fill up various websites with our life's representation is that we need to feel like we can leave a remnant of our presence if only in mega pixels and gigabytes.

Sometimes, when I sit here and type, it is just to sort things out. Other times, I wonder if the things that I think and feel and experience will make more sense and have more meaning if I manage to find the words to express them in print. I don't know if that makes the things that happen mean more or if it simply lends a minor bit of permanence to something that might have otherwise passed by unnoticed.

Regardless of circumstances, I have always written things down. The good, the bad, the painful and the pleasant all have found a space in my journals over the years.

Reading back through them at times has been an exercise in agony or joy. Seeing that circumstances don't have to dictate my future is the biggest blessing of writing down my feelings and thoughts in whatever medium I have used. It has also been a journey of discovery that has created tersely worded entries on days that writing my true feelings seemed to difficult to manage and pages of feelings on those days where I have tried in vain to find the words to express the deep emotional responses I am feeling.

Sharing time with the people in my life who mean the most to me creates some of those pages long entries that remind me of the emotions and feelings that those times are all about. Even years later, reading about the shared time and the wonderful moments together can cast a ray of sunshine into my life that chases away the gloominess for days on end.

Being a single voice in the vast wilderness of life isn't a solitary pursuit. But learning to express your own pitch and timbre in a world of shallow imitators can be a sometimes daunting task. We all want to fit into the chorus, but if we do it for the sake of fitting in without considering our own unique outlook, we miss the harmony that results from many voices that create their own music within the majesty of sound.

So here's to all the writers, the poets and wordsmiths, to the wanna-be's and the no talent hacks that sit and type the ebb and flow of their life for the world to see or for only themselves.
Keep crying out with your singularly wonderful voice in the wilderness. Only you can share your personal message and only you can decide what is going to be offered up as the token of your life's journey.

God willing, if each person finds one moment to share their voice, the chorus that results will sing a beautiful song of what it means to be a part of this experience we all share called life.