Deleting my Facebook has forced me to reckon with how much I crave attention. That I haven't deleted this blog as well yet is a testament to still not being ready to reckon with that fact. There are so many moments throughout the day now when I catch myself thinking in terms of status updates, what I want to share with the modest group of 160 people known as my friends list. Maybe taking away that avenue will be a sort of sensory deprivation to me, like going without sleep is to a normal person, and I'll spout all sorts of great things.
I'm getting used to existence being lonely again. I read a book by Alan Watts recently about the self, how we've been deluded and continue to delude ourselves about the nature of our own individuality and autonomy. It pretty much validated for me what I've been afraid of all along: that the self is one of millions of "I"s in the universe, and death is a return to the Self as a whole, and we will continue being born after we die, that this feeling of the "I" will continue forever, and that death isn't necessarily a blank. Of course this is philosophy and speculation, but I've been convinced since I was 7 that people are reborn. I remember sitting in first grade, trying to remember a past life when I was a boy, and telling myself if I had more lives, I would at least remember this moment in this life. A few months ago, I killed a centipede with Chanel No. 5 during a trip and watched it writhe, oddly human-like in its gestures of pain, I realized that forever might be living every single organism's life - past, present, and those to come - and one day I might be that centipede, and I might be everyone on the Titanic, and I might be Bill Watterson, Richard Brautigan, and the mosquitos I kill with shoes.
Anyway, I needed to get these ideas out where people might read them and respond (I'm not holding my breath, though). Honestly, as stupid as this sounds, I'm terrified of all the lives I'll have to live.
Do you ever talk to people in your head? Like, you actually mean to tell them certain things, but you'll think about how to talk about it with them. I think that's what status updates become. Instead of thinking of talking to people, I think "I will make this my status." "I will put this in my blog." The problem is that often people are not responsive.
ReplyDeleteI have imaginary conversations with people who I want to have real-life conversations with but have no idea how to approach, asking for a conversation. This translates itself into my status updates, which were sometimes directed at specific people in the blind hope that they'd respond and we could go from there. Of course this never happened because, yeah, most people are unresponsive and don't take liberties to try to get to know each other via Facebook. I guess I can't blame them, but at this point it seems like all we have. No one is patient enough for long, real-life conversations anymore.
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