On The Slab

Quite often these days, I find myself contemplating the “power” of the internet.

It has the power to improve lives, and it has the power to ruin lives.
It has the power of enabling communication, and yet it is also very easy to mis-understand typed-text.
It gives some people experiences they would have missed and yet it can also be boring as hell.
It can bring people together or tear them apart.

Often what we hear or read about “the internet” can be portrayed in a very bad light, but….
in so many ways, it sounds like just normal “life” to me.

I guess the nets no different to real life in so many ways that its easy to get caught up in it, thinking, feeling, living via a screen and a keyboard (all us geeks have been there lets face it! ).

But I also think it has one HUGE bonus………

I think, as people, in “real life”, somtimes we find it difficult to see whats right in front of our eyes from time to time.
We dont have the luxury of having what happens right there on the screen, and if we did, would we feel the same emotional response?
I think some of us do, I think there are people who dont see text, or some unknown entity talking, I firmly believe, despite popular opinion that some of us can actually communicate over this net of ours in a positive and constructive, and yes, emotional way.

So many people in my life I have met initially online, or at least communicated with via the internet at one point or another, have become people I consider my closest friends.

For example, a perfect example, my sister Elaine,….
There was so much about her I had almost “forgotten” or just plain did’nt know.
I think now, these days, I feel closer to her than I ever realised.
I actually feel like she is an extremely close friend as well as my sister.
Forgotten things can be said in the time it takes to turn on a computer, things we mean to see or say but for one reason or another forgot to talk about, or never had a chance to.
For instance, she recently posted about how difficult a life she thinks I have had, and I told her that I actually truly believe lifes been a lot harder for her than it has for me.

Thats somthing I had meant and wanted to tell her for years, but somhow never did. Which is my own fault, its somthing I should have told her long long ago.
More than anything else, I cant help feeling and hoping that the net has played a role in me finally saying that.

In these quiet moments, when we are reading our words, ant the words of others, we can do it at our own pace, never having to worry about coming up with somthing “on the spot” that often comes out wrong somhow in the hustle and bustle of verbal communication.

My other sister, has her own blog these days so we can see the things that often arent said.
My parents read these things and maybe learn a bit more about the people we are now, as opposed to still being kids in their eyes.

And I myself have met the man of my dreams, who I would probably never have met if it was’nt for miles of fibre optic cable running under and over the vast sea’s and lands of this planet.
And, had it not been for him, we would never have shared this familly experience in the first place, when I think about it.

A perfect example of how the internet can change an entire familly in such a positive way.