Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Controlling Fate

First of all, I would like to apologize for my ridiculously long absence. It's been a crazy move, crazy holidays, crazy job findings. Crazy Crazy.
Anyway, the other day I saw my moms friend and she said something that has not left my head since the day she said it. She was telling me about how she wants my mom to get on Facebook, and how my mom refuses because it's just a personal invasion on somebody else's life, blah blah. She then said "you know I was talking to a priest about Facebook one time and she said it was such a destruction of life because through Facebook, your past, present and future all meet. Life's not supposed to be that way."
That is one hell of a true statement if I've ever heard one.
So I've been thinking about it since then and I've come to the realization that Facebook (and other social media outlets along with Skype, phones, texting, etc..) are almost taking the place of fate. And yes, I'm fully aware that I'm writing about this on a BLOG and use all of the above.
But before Facebook and all this nonsense, think about relationships between people, moving, and life in general. A significant part of our lives and experiences revolve around moving on and leaving things behind. We develop as a person from learning from mistakes we've made in our past, and using the future to start a new chapter, with new people, new friends, new cities. Facebook doesn't allow us to do that to the fullest extent. (I'm using Facebook only as a popular example.) We always have access to our past, through pictures, looking at ex boyfriends profiles that don't keep them on private, reading old messages and always being able to contact people. It's the same when you leave a city and you fly somewhere else. Now planes have WiFi that support Skype ON the flight. You're never alone. You can never have a chance to just say goodbye and be done. Once you're off the flight you're on your phone texting/calling and you're still always (via technology) with the person you just said goodbye to. You're never alone. You can never just be by yourself to reflect on what you've just left. There is always constant access to a memory...well that's just it there almost isn't such thing as a memory anymore. You can always look back at a picture, or talk to a person that's supposed to be out of your life. How often to you hear "man, I miss him/her I wonder what they're up to..." and have it be left at that. The next step is..."FACEBOOK HIM/HER." It's taking away from imagination, it takes away from wonder. Why do you think so many people are in messed up relationships now? You can never get away from anyone toxic or damaging, you surround yourself by them always. Fate has no say in how things turn out for us anymore, we're in complete control. Life's not supposed to be that way.

1 comment:

  1. "...your past, present and future all meet."

    That is really interesting. Maybe the answer is to lock your FB down to private, and closely monitor your friends list? Surely you can't get rid of it altogether?

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