ADIOS, FACEBOOK (Don't Let the Door Hit You)

Bless me, Mr. Zuckerberg, for I have quit.  It has been three weeks since I last looked at FB.  For my penance, I shall read three books and walk each day in the fresh air.

I joined FaceBook 16 years ago.  Three weeks ago, I deactivated my account. I had several reasons for doing this. First, I am pissed with Mark Z. for toadying up to you-know-who.  Second, I don't want Mark Z. up in my business.  Third, I was addicted.  

Sigh.  Yes.  Addicted.  It's not that I was looking at it all day long; I didn't have it on my phone, so there wasn't that temptation.  Still, every time I would sit down to use my computer to write or pay bills or read email, I would first take a quick look at FB.  Sometimes, that quick look would lead me down a rabbit hole, from which I might not emerge for 15 or 20 minutes.  

How many hours of my life have I wasted on such rabbit holes?

I will confess that for the first two weeks after deactivating, I experienced something like phantom-limb syndrome.  I would sit down at my computer and look in my history for FB, only to remember it was no longer there.  I'm happy to report I'm past that now.  Sure, I will miss seeing what some people are posting or talking about, and, yes, I will miss the opportunity to share the link when I have a new blog post.   But the negatives now outweigh the positives.

I have struggled with my addiction for too long.  Over ten years ago, I wrote a post in which I vowed to only look at FB once every second or third day.  Clearly, that didn't work out. . . So, adios FaceBook, and kudos to those of you who never joined or, if you did, never became addicted.  

FB friends, I'll see you in the real world.

                             Photo by Jan Tinneberg on Unsplash

(I deactivated, rather than shutting down, my account because I didn't want to lose Messenger, which is the only address I have for some people.  When I collect contact information for those I want to stay in touch with, Messenger can go too.  I have kept Instagram for now, even though it is also owned by Meta, because I like to see family photos and I no longer post anything personal there.  If it gets to be too much of a time suck, I will ditch it too.)

And what about the other two members of the billionaire, sycophant triumvirate?  I can't afford a Tesla, and even if I could, I would not give a nickel to that man. 

Jeff B, you're next on my list.  This one is really difficult for me. I love the ease of Amazon and I hate to get in my car to shop. But, enough is enough.  I have cut down on my Amazon purchases, and when my membership year is up, I shall quit (ouch).  In the meantime, I understand that Jeff's ex has given away half of her fortune, and since some of that money came from me, I will console myself with the thought that my purchases have indirectly supported good causes.

And now, I'm going to take that walk in the fresh air.  

UBI SUNT? (Where Are They?)

Yesterday I deleted three people from my phone's contact list.  No, I had not had a falling out with any of them, although you might say they had fallen from my life and the lives of those who loved them.  To put the matter bluntly, they had died--one recently, one a couple of years ago, and one a few years before that.

It was only while searching for someone on my list yesterday that I realized I had no further use for these folks' phone numbers and email addresses.  Still, the deleting felt strange, unsettling.  

It felt wrong to erase these traces of people with whom I had been more or less close, so I'm going to share a few sentences about each in order to counteract the deletions. 

I saw a lot of Charlie back in my 30s.  He was married to a very close friend. We had meals together (he was a great cook) and talked about books (he was an antiquarian book seller and a poet).  Our contacts were sporadic after he and my friend divorced, yet the connection was not severed entirely.  He read, critiqued, and encouraged my writing, and occasionally sent me a book.  

I didn't know Rick well--well enough, though, to have him in my contact list.  In my experience, he was a fine man - kind and thoughtful, a musician and a reader and a dedicated volunteer.  One of his last kindnesses was to replace the wooden handle on my husband's wheelbarrow.  

I had a fairly close friendship with Brian.  We shared a love of writing and would read one another's stories. We also talked about our kids over lunch several times a year.  I will always regret not calling him in the weeks before he suddenly and unexpectedly died. 

I had known all three, and then they were gone, gone whether or not they remained in my contact list. 

The words that came into my head while making these deletions were these: Ubi sunt?  Let me explain. Many years ago, one of my college English professors shared a Latin quotation, which he said meant something like, "Where are they, those who went before us?" 

In any event, I could only remember the first two words, perhaps glued to my brain by the pleasure of the oo sound twice repeated.  I had to look up the rest. Here it is:  Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?

Ubi sunt, indeed. 

Does anyone really leave us in this digital age?  I confess I have not deleted, and do not intend to delete, the last two phone messages from my brother Jim, who died over a year ago.  Listening to his voice now and then makes me smile.

And there is this:  Two of the three people whose contacts I deleted still have active Facebook pages.  That's right.  Their Facebook "friends" can go back and look at what the departed had posted.  Is this a good thing?  I don't know. Maybe it's a comfort to those left behind. Maybe it's macabre. 

You decide.  

But let's return to the cosmic question:  Where are they now?  I tend toward the Taoist view that we come from what is whole, enter the world of forms, and upon our deaths, return to what is whole.  In his "Intimations Ode," the poet William Wordsworth wrote, "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting . . . Not in entire forgetfulness,/And not in utter nakedness,/But trailing clouds of glory do we come/From God who is our home. .."**  (You might substitute The Tao or Love for the word God, if that is more comfortable.). 

Wordsworth's lines were echoed by something my daughter Anne said at about age three or three-and-a-half.  She first asked, "Where was I before I was born?" Then, before I could take a moment to respond, she announced, "I know. I was part of all of the love."

Wow. 

In the same poem, Wordsworth went on to write about the memory fading as we grow older.  Apparently, Anne had yet to forget.  And if we come from an undivided experience of love, is that what we return to?  I would like to think so. That's what those who have had near-death experiences describe.  (NDEs, however, are a subject for another day.) 

Listen, I'm not trying to convince you of anything.  I'm just giving you my intuitions with regard to ubi sunt.  If I am wrong, and all is dark after death, I will never know. 

I do know this.  When we delete someone from our contacts, we do not delete memory or affection.  Those who have mattered to us live on in our hearts while we are here, and maybe that is enough.

** The full title of the poem:  "ODE:  Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood"

Photo by Dario Brönnimann on Unsplash

ARE MY EARS BLEEDING?

          About 30 years ago, I read the novel Easy Travel to Other Planets by Ted Mooney.  Of course, I have forgotten most of the plot.  One of the things that I do remember is that some characters suffered from “information sickness,” which caused bleeding from the ears. 

         It was prescient of Mooney to posit information sickness in 1981, when the book was published.  I doubt, however, that he could have imagined the flow of information that now inundates us at every turn. 

         When Easy Travel was published, there were, after all, no smart phones.  There was no Facebook.  No Twitter.

         Now our phones are alive with text messages, emails, phone messages, and lists of missed calls.  If we don’t check for an hour, we might miss something.  I understand that many young people respond to bings and bleeps from their phones all night.  When do they sleep?

         I confess to being overwhelmed.  Take email, for instance.  When email started playing a role at work, it seemed, for a while, like a good thing—until the constant appearance of incoming emails became a permanent distraction.  And then there was the fact that you could no longer peruse a letter and take some time to ponder your reply.  A response was expected NOW, and 24/7.  If you had a smart phone, why couldn’t you be on call all of the time?

         Personal email is no less vexing.  No matter how frequently I unsubscribe from retailers, my email inbox still fills up with unwanted sales pitches.  I have sometimes failed to notice a personal email among the onslaught of junk mail.

         And now there is Facebook, with which I have a love/hate relationship.  I have tinkered with my settings so that I will not be bombarded with constant emails telling me who has posted what on FB.  But I find that I am tempted to check FB more frequently than feels comfortable, just in case I might be missing something.   I, along with a great many others, have been hooked by an intermittent reward system.   We are apparently more likely to repeat a behavior when the rewards are intermittent, than when they are constant.  Sure, much of what is on FB is of no moment, but what if there is a grandkid photo today?  Or a link to a thoughtful article?

         Of course, email and FB are also dandy procrastination devices.  I spent more time checking email and Facebook when I was writing a Masters thesis two years ago than at any time before or since. 

         And let us not forget the news.  When I graduated from college, I worked for a while as a reporter for a local paper.  There was a machine in the newsroom that constantly spewed forth a ticker tape with the latest wire service news reports.  When there was an election, we would work late to answer phone calls from people wanting to know about the returns.  Now, every computer and phone serves the function of a ticker tape, updating the news from moment to moment.  There is no respite.

         No wonder I am tempted to check my ears for bleeding. 

         So what is to be done?  My husband, who does not own a smart phone and would not be caught dead on Facebook, thinks the answer is simple:  Get off of Facebook.  I am not ready to do this.  I like seeing what my daughters and his sons are up to.  This is where they post photographs.  Also, I have reconnected with some people on FB and it is a nice place to share feelings when something important happens in the world. 

         Still, there have to be ways to step back.  Here are some things that I have done, and am doing, by way of interrupting the constant flow of information.  I would love to hear your suggestions.

         - I turn off the sound on my phone at night. 

         (While my mother was alive, I was constantly on call for the latest crisis.  It took me a while after her death earlier this year to understand that I could turn off my phone without letting anyone down.)

- I am trying to remember to turn off my phone while I am eating, especially when I am eating with others, including my husband. 

         - I carry my phone, but turn off the sound, when I am on a walk. (I feel safer having it with me when I am walking the dog in the woods.) 

         - I leave my phone in the house when I am gardening.  I turn off the sound when I am writing.

         - I am vowing to check Facebook less often.  I will start by backing off to every other day or every third day, and then re-evaluate.   (The photos, I remind myself, will still be there when I check in.)

         - I am contemplating a technology Sabbath—one day a week when I stay off of my computer and ipad and do not read emails on my phone.  (Have any of you done this successfully?)

        

         I can do this, right?  After all, until I was in my mid-thirties  telephones were tethered to the wall and had handsets that were tethered to the base of the phone.  There was no “voice mail.”  If someone called you and you weren’t home to answer, you didn’t know about the call. 

And, most of the time, it didn’t matter. 

Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

         

If life is a river, why is mine filled with silt? Some Thoughts on Facebook three years in.

Let’s say life is a river.  I know, as metaphors go, this one’s not exactly original.  But humor me while I tease it out a bit.  A life flows like a river until, at death, it merges with the sea of the eternal.  Given this metaphor, here’s my question:  If life is a river, why is mine filled with silt?

The answer in a word:  Facebook.

Here’s how I see it.  The river of life flows along.  We have an experience and when the experience is behind us, it settles to bottom of the river--like silt.  Some experiences – those that are traumatic or glorious or in some way dramatic - take longer to settle.  The water stays muddy a bit longer.  But, as a rule, these eventually settle as well, remaining at the bottom of the river, quiescent  except when, say, we look at an old photograph or hear a song that formed the background of a pivotal moment. 

And then along comes Facebook and stirs up the silt.

Suddenly my past is part of my daily life.  Sometimes this is wonderful.  I have been happy to reconnect with people and learn where they are in their lives.  Some of them have re-emerged as current friends.

But sometimes the reconnections are dislocating.  I know more about the day-to-day lives of people whom I barely knew 40 years ago than I know about the lives of many of the people who matter most to me today. 

And sometimes I have to take a breather.   Let the silt settle for a while.  Remember where I am right now and who has my back today.  Sometimes I am even moved to call someone.  On the telephone.  To make a date to spend time with a flesh and blood person.  Sometimes the silt reminds me to tend to what really matters right now.

So, I'm dedicating this, my first blog post, to the friends with whom I sat and talked for a couple of hours -- in person -- yesterday morning and to the friends who joined my husband and me last night for another few hours of great conversation.  And to my book group, and to all those who continue, against the digital tide, to take the time and risk to have a face-to-face or, at least a voice-to-voice, conversation.  

copyright 2012 Marjorie A. Speirs