Before I move on to those, I'd like to share with you some of the hard lessons I learned from that experience. Here are the Top 5 'take home' messages from it, as they say in the corporate world:
Top 5 Things the Internet Inadvertently Taught Me This Week
1) The internet makes makes the process of sharing information and opinions much more democratic, which is important, but its anonymity permits people to attack others for expressing their right to free speech with little consequences for their actions. Once upon a time people would have to go to the effort of writing a letter to the editor, or write a response of publishable quality in their own right, in order to disagree with a published piece. Responses could then be vetted so that only those that genuinely encouraged healthy debate would be published, and the inevitable crazy letters would be rolled up and smoked after hours by interns. Experience has made very clear to me the fact that you don't need a licence to operate the internet, but I am looking into this as a matter of urgency. . .
2) Due to the fact that we are now all one big social network and online 'friends' with every human being we've ever encountered, from high school friends, to ex-colleagues, to friends of your best friend's cousin, you suddenly find out that you actually know some of these militant illiterates. More disturbingly, you realise that you've pretty much invited them into your bedroom by giving them unfettered access to your Facebook wall. Suddenly you're engrossed in the Yellow Pages looking for someone to come and change the locks you so naively gave out spare keys for. Hell, you even have to consider moving out altogether so they stop driving by with their beady eyes hanging out the car window at night.
3) The internet, whilst trying to make us feel 'connected', can actually be a very lonely place. The people on it are kind of there, in that they're talking all the time, but none of them are sitting in your living room collecting the tearful fruits of your wailing in a bucket and passing you tissues to blow your nose. Only your real friends do that, so what is the point of bothering to interact with the rest, who mostly just exasperate you? Yes, you can make good friends online. I have done so a few times in my life. But those people whose friendship transpires from the virtual to the real world are the exception, not the rule. There was a very interesting article on the topic published recently in The Atlantic, which you can read here.
4) The best thing you can do on the internet, as in life itself, is not to interact with people at all, but instead to spend all of your time online watching funny cat videos and looking at porn (go, on, click - I know you want to).
5) That just when you've given up on the internet and hovered your finger over the 'disconnect' button for the millionth time, something that makes you love your online community happens to make you doubt your decision all over again. For example, someone you admire and follow stealthily on Twitter, posts an excellent quote which is really timely and really resonates with you, and you're really thankful you stumbled across it. That's what happened to me this week when Catherine Deveney posted the following quote on her Facebook wall:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat (From Theodore Roosevelt, The Man in the Arena, April 23, 1910).How very true. 'I should keep trying to strive valiantly to help people understand a bereaved mother's grief', I said to myself. In the 30 seconds it took me to read this I was inspired all over again by those I admire who share their views, however unpopular, with the world. I felt better.
It happened the second time only this morning when I stumbled across the link to a blog where a fellow bereaved mother had written something that expressed exactly how I felt, even better than I could have. Please, read it here. This made me realise that maybe, after all, my voice is important to someone as this lady's was to me today. And that this blog could be important to others beyond its use as a place for me to honour Max's memory and keep him alive for those who care about him and about me.
I have made this blog private, however, with access by password only, for a while. I don't feel strong enough to defend myself against those who would take issue with the honest expression of my thoughts and feelings. I feel this is a shame, as I am proud of what I do in this space, but I don't yet know how to adequately negotiate this public/private divide, and I want only supportive, loving people to be by my side as I awkwardly learn.
