Un/real ( another lesson learnt)

We were talking about you behind your back. We were saying how we cannot comprehend your choice, how we could not do what you do, not now, not yet, maybe not ever. I don't know if it is worse to talk about someone when they are not present or to say to them what one thinks and thereby hurts their feelings. What is worse? Maybe one should just not say anything at all. 

Whenever I observe people and listen to what they talk about, it is interesting to see that everyone is lonely. We are surrounded by more possibilities of interaction than ever before, we can be on-line, communicating with strangers or friends or family or simply other people, and yet, the emotion that binds us is loneliness. Yes, love and hate and envy and joy and the Pandora's box of emotional reactions is natural to everyone, too, but I think we are all lonelier than we can admit. 

One of my lecturer's said that when we walk around or go to work or whatever, whenever we are in the company of others, all we want is an acknowledgement of existence. Someone to say, yes, ja, you there, I see you. You are here to me. Somehow we crave interaction but loathe it at the same time: it is easier to know what is going on in someone else's life by simply checking their Facebook or now, Google plus site. It is easier to be a voyeur than to actually speak to a person. I know, I am quite good at wasting my time reading people.com and honing my voyeuristic tendencies. 

I wonder if it will change, or if in the future we will all disappear behind the profiles on social networking sites,  behind avatars, behind screens and photoshopped images. Will we all chose to project unreality and a created persona, rather than presenting ourselves, as we are? This is quite a dilemma: in an age where manipulation of images and the creation of a personality are expected, where the search for absolute truth has changed to a search for absolute perfection, where every 10-year-old owns a better phone than their parents, hmm, in an age where we are not expected to be us, how can we? 

When we were talking about you and your choices and how we think you are lonelier than you let on, I say just talk about it. There is no need to fear being rejected or being judged ( well, if you gossip about someone I guess you are already judging them, so perhaps that ship has sailed). I like people more when they are real and troubled and problematic and strange and human than when they are an illusion of perfection. 

.