What a Tangled Web We Weave

The year is 2016. We the good people of earth are becoming more and more connected with the help of the internet and social media. Or are we?

Social Media is a great tool for staying connected to the vast world around us. It is a great tool for staying connected to friends, family, and loved ones. But like that reciprocating saw or that wood router in your grandpa's tool shed it takes some skill and some work to properly utilize any tool.

In the year 2016 the fact of the matter is that instead of becoming more connected to people with the use of technology we are becoming less connected but to more people. Let me break that sentence down for you so there is no mistaking what I'm saying. Thanks to the use of technology we are able to make connections with a seemingly infinite amount of people or at least to your Facebook limit of 5000. But that's why we have Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Pininterest, and the literally hundreds of other social networks, right? As we connect to MORE people are we really becoming MORE connected? For the overwhelming majority of people the answer to that question is no. This is yet another case where quantity does not equal quality. In fact, the ease which with we feel like we can connect to others in this age of information is stripping away our ability to truly connect with one another. This is not to discount any valuable relationships that are built on-line or to suggest it isn't possible to make, continue, and enhance relationships through cyber space. You absolutely can and I hope you absolutely will. But what we all need to realize is that doing so is going to take some work. Some real work. And more importantly taking a step back and realizing what is really going on with our connections is critical to recognizing and developing them.

There are a couple of issues in particular that I'd like to address. The first is ease of use makes connecting easier but does not enrich connections. Next, relying heavily on the internet as a means of making connections is stripping away our ability to connect directly in more human ways to each other. Lastly, recognizing connections that are deep and meaningful vs connections that simply exist.

When we think of the internet one of the first things that comes to mind is that it makes things easier. Just the other day we were searching for a Christmas gift and found what we wanted. They had free two day shipping but when we checked out they also had free same day shipping. Same day shipping? Really? So, of course given the choice we chose same day shipping. And sure enough within a couple hours this product was at our door. I don't even know if we had moved from the spot we were in when we ordered it and here it was already. What convenience! It's truly amazing! Does making things easier always correlate to making things better though? In the case of forging relationships in most cases the answer is no. Social networks like Facebook allow us to share anything we want with a mass amount of people. That's nice and easy. People get to see and read what we share and react to it when it suits them. That's nice and easy too. The person who shared feels good when what they shared receives attention and the person who gave it attention feels good because they were able to give you this attention and were exposed to whatever was shared. Everything is nice and easy. Life is great. All hail Al Gore's magical interweb machine! But wait a second. What REALLY just happened here. Person A posted something. It may have taken them a second or it may have taken them hours to prepare their post. It isn't really relevant on their side. Whatever it was it was important to them to share it. Person B was scrolling away on their timeline, saw the post, clicked a button or maybe made a comment and went about their day. This is a win for both of them for sure. But how much of a win is the question. We have begun to train ourselves that these interactions build a connection between us. While saying there is no meaning in these little connections would be categorically false overstating or in fact over-feeling these connections is also a problem. When you look at this interaction the important part to examine is how much effort the input by Person B took. A simple click and/or a short comment takes seconds. It is great that we have the ability to interact so simply and efficiently but it is no given that the interaction is bonding in anyway. Both Person A and Person B can even have huge personal impact with regards to what was posted but that still doesn't form a bond between them. When you make something too easy you strip away a lot of the elements that create bonds between people. Intention is still there but when intention only takes a click of the button we can afford to give intention to just about everything. So while the meaning is real the lack of work to be intentional strips out the true connection of intention. These are the trappings that come with the ease of communication. Would person B be have been willing to have the same interaction with Person A if it meant getting on their bike and riding a mile and meeting at a park to experience the same engagement? Chances are the answer is No. Time is a valuable commodity to people and that is why the more time you spend on an interaction, intently, the stronger the bond will be. This concept of time and effort will come up again and again when analyzing one's true connection to others and it's important.

The second part I'd like to address is how relying heavily on the internet as a means of making connections is stripping away our ability to connect directly in more human ways. I think I've already covered that we don't need to invalidate our online interactions completely. There is worth to be taken from them all and all of them are not created equal. I repeat this because I do not want to vilify technology and social networking as much as I'd like to make others aware that it is a tool and you need to learn to use it wisely for it to be effective. But this second point is not so much about the things we do on the internet but how the internet has negatively effected how we interact social away from the internet. In 2015/2016 I took a year away from Facebook. I had many reasons for doing this but one of them was that I felt like I was not actively enriching relationships I had with other people. There was a time when Facebook made me feel like I had more friends than I'd ever had before. I had hundreds of people who I interacted with weekly and I had true and honest feelings of love and friendship for all of them. The problem was that I was using the Book as a crutch for social interaction. I wasn't doing the human things that enriched friendships and made them special, made them real really. Of all those friends I had away from large scale events how many had I shared a meal in my house or theirs? How many had I seen face to face and had a real substantive conversation with? Did I know anything about their families? Where they came from? What they did to become who they were? Who they wanted to be? In some cases that information was gleaned from internet postings but the face to face time and the honest discourse were severely lacking from my life. I had to reteach myself how to decide I wanted to spend time with a person, contact them directly, set a time to get together, show up at the time, and meaningfully engage with that person. These are all skills that I possessed but ones that I honestly used infrequently. I'm sure there are more than one reason for that but one of the reasons was definitely because I had fooled myself into thinking the online interactions were a substitute for direct personal ones. And they aren't. Because it took a lot of time and effort (there it is again) for me to follow through with these things away from the technology. And even more importantly to me it took the other people a lot of time and effort to follow through. And most importantly THEY WANTED TO! And that, for me was the key to realizing when a bond was truly real. When you are willing to put in work to spend time with another and they are willing to put work into spending time with you it truly means something. You are bonding, you are caring, you are loving that person. You are doing it in a way that is substantial. It isn't a click of a button and a few written words. It is making a conscious decision that these people mean something to you and doing what it takes to engage with them directly and just as importantly them doing the same for you. This type of human connection is vital and you can use social networking as a tool for organizing these connections but you can't use it in place of them. It simply doesn't represent a true human bond. And that is what real love is. Using your time and effort on another because they are worth it to you.

By now the last point has already been made but I'll reiterate it. How do I recognize connections that are deep and meaningful vs connections that just simply exist? I can go to a party next week with hundreds of my friends. I will be sincerely happy to see each of them. I will hug them and tell them from my heart that I love them. These are not false words and feelings. I really feel these things. But am I really giving these people love? On some level yes I certainly am. But it's that thin kind of love. That surface love. Just a step above the love I have for any other living person because I do love people whether I know them or not. I am interested in people being happy, healthy, and loved. I'm more interested in the people I know being that way. But how much am I adding to the lives of the people at this party? The answer is a little. Maybe just above the bare minimum. And that is just being honest with myself. I'd like to say that my loving efforts even when small are super significant (and I'm sure to varying degrees they can be) but the truth is that those people are not getting the breadth of my love. They are getting a snippet of it. And that's what I'm getting from them too. Parties and events are a lot like social networks. They are filled with instant gratification. It's why we love them! They are not bad things at all. But if you get trapped into believing that is the pinnacle of love and happiness then you are really getting trapped into a life of unfulfillment. Because, most of us at least, can't be partying all the time. We need to build better bonds with specific people. We need to find a way to use our tools to love more richly, more deeply. The way we do that once again is through time and effort. When you want to know how a person truly feels about you observe how much time and effort they put into their interactions with you. If someone is truly interested in you and your love they WILL put in the time and effort to connect with you. Some of that will be on social networking for sure. You can make the same observations there as you can in person. But the ones who you truly matter to will make there time for you in person. They will make the effort to see you and interact. It's absolutely the way to tell who is invested in you and who isn't. By the same token others can see that in you. If you aren't making the time and effort to connect with someone you want to have a better connection with then guess what? They aren't as important to you as you think. If you have excuses rising up from your brain just stop there. There isn't an excuse.

Time as we know it is limited and we prioritize what we spend our time on. After you take out what you consider time spent on responsibilities that time left over is yours to work with. Whoever you commit that time to, those are the people that you are deciding matter to you. And the same is going on with other people toward you. So step away from the computer for a bit. Think about the people who truly matter to you and put in some time and effort for them. Hopefully they will do the same for you. You'll know then who your really connected too.

I could end there but I do want to leave one caution and its this:

Everyone is different. Everyone has a different life, different responsibilities, different worries, different personalities, different perspectives. While investing time and energy into someone is absolutely a hard indicator of how much you want to be connected to someone or vice versa the amount of time and energy you have to share across your friend spectrum may vary greatly with someone else's. So don't be quick to write someone off. Try to get an understanding of another persons life before you start to draw conclusions. I'd also say that if the indicators of time and effort aren't there for someone you want to invest in don't give up too soon. Sometimes it takes a lot of work from one side for the other side to realize it. If someone is worth it to you keep putting in the work until it becomes obvious they aren't interested in your time and effort. The letdown may make you feel bad when it happens but the friendships you will gain when real connections are made will be more than worth it.

I'm sure people will have lots to say about this so please feel free to comment here or on Facebook (oh the irony). You can also email me at planetlovemore@gmail.com and I'd be happy to have a discussion. Until then LOVEMORE!