Who would have thought you could write and send a letter without using good old pen and paper or going to the Post Office?
Today, to connect would have been like someone in ancient times sleeping, then dreaming of conversing with someone else, and getting confirmed on such a miraculous conversation in real time.
In a book, I read about how Tibetans would go up a roof at night to lie down and sleep, but actually also to “soul-travel” to other places consciously anywhere in the world and connect. In our time, someone’s bound to explain this as electrical connection or something.
Thus, this day’s connectedness is overwhelming. You wouldn’t be surprised when an African friend in Timbuktu would mention on the phone in real time your dream last night.
You’re connected, even if no one else is there in the room. The phone rings, you see in the computer screen that you have e-mail, your cell phone’s vibrating and the screen says, “1 message received,” then “2 messages received,” the landline telephone is ringing perpetually. This while the TV is on, selling tickets to a Sinulog party and announcing that the gown that actress Audrey Hepburn wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s was auctioned to help the poor in India. Someone bought it for six times more in cost than hoped for, $A1.03 million. Would you have known this, and be inspired, without electronics?
But where is the human warmth in all these? Also, the motivation to connect warmly in the old way?
A sister in Missouri said she doesn’t like to send e-mail, worse of all, do text, not even to write through the PO (unless it’s to send hard prints of photos); there’s nothing like a telephone call that conveys warmth and love, like no other way, across such unthinkable distance between. Unless it’s possible for her to jump off her bed in the morning and find herself on Sepulveda street a minute after, for that quick personal and dear visit.
Yet, it’s also a way to disconnect. Take texting or chatting or instant messaging.
In text, you get a message like “Com 2 d party nex week?” (It’s from a friend who’s talkative and a show-off. But she could be a wonderful one, you just want a breathing spell, if you could finally stand her.)
“Am sori but wil b out of town.” you text back.
“On Wed?”
“Yep.”
“K.”
And the “conversation” ends there. See how it goes if it’s a landline call.
“You have to be in that party!” says the friend.
“Tomorrow?” (You don’t enjoy her parties.)
“Next week pa, puwede ba! You have time!”
“Oh, sorry, I’ll be out of town.”
“Where!”
“Uh, my aunt’s place in Oslob.”
“Move it or go this week!”
“Sorry….”
“Aw, c’mon!” (And she won’t hang up the phone.)
But then you don’t have to answer it, in the first place, and that’s a disconnection of sort. In texting, chatting or instant messaging, it’s easier to get off, and try to disconnect. So, for good reason, you can cut off the TV, the computer, the cell phone and be alone in the world.
And even if you do connect, the fervor and passion of the human touch, or even just the shift and tone of the human voice, isn’t there anymore to keep and nourish a relatedness that’s never less for being old-time.
And there’s another disconnection. The children, especially, don’t speak the parents’ language anymore. The parents are way behind the technological savvy of the kids.
“What do you mean there is a virus in there! You mean an infectious one?” asks the father, alarmed.
The gap will always be there in the face of connectedness.
