The Real VS Real Fast Phenomenon in (Inter)Action

 

(No  skating allowed here)

John Clark checking in on the challenge (and even real intrigue) between in-person connections and social media. First off, there’s nothing more enjoyable and satisfying than a conversation between two humans with fully functioning brains.

Heck, I’ll take that a step further, it’s almost criminally fun to have a conversation with someone whose ideas resemble a water-soaked copy of Where’s Waldo in Politicalland. We got plenty of the latter, but not so many of the former.

I consider myself a professional listener, skills honed from twenty-seven years as a mental health professional, coupled with close to twenty as a librarian. I’ve learned that a willingness to listen is a very valuable commodity in a world that has mostly devolved into loudness and memes.

For me, conversations are gold mines. Want to know about your family, ask the previous generation, shut your mouth, and pay attention. Want your children to respect you? Demonstrate the ability to listen without trying to interrupt or fix whatever YOU think is wrong. Deborah Tannen’s book You Just Don’t Understand is possibly the most useful one I’ve ever read. It was reinforced by our older daughter Sara when she was a freshman in college when she looked me in the eye and said “I don’t want anything fixed, I want to know you’re listening and understand.”

I’m far from a perfect practitioner of active listening skills, but I feel comfortable waiting until others in a meeting have shot, gutted, and skinned the horse before saying something and then I focus on solutions because that’s really why people have meetings...or as least it should be.

I love chatting with older Mainers, always have. They have true tales that are not only fascinating, but sometimes defy belief. I know about fishing spots few others are aware of thanks to conversations, I’ve listened to people who never finished school who are more skilled than half those in Silicon Valley.

Then there’s social media. Up front, I think it’s likely to be the epitaph on civilization’s tombstone. I sometimes play with the idea of rewriting famous events in US history if social media had been available. Imagine pioneers wandering around to get sufficient bars to text selfies and stumbling off cliffs or getting caught in a buffalo stampede, How about the Donner Pass party livestreaming when they started starving. (My dark humor be with me always)

I admit to being a cynic who cringes when I see drivers whipping out their phones at every stop light, and I have to bite my tongue every time I go grocery shopping because I have to walk around at least one person who’s had to call home to be reassured that they’re picking up the right brand of coffee.

If I’m serious about the subject, I really worry about the lack of time to think between reading and responding on social media. Instantaneous responses are often dangerous, forcing rue, or illogical retrenchment after something said or memed in the heat of the moment.

There are some benefits, I connect daily with friends on Facebook and I really like the overall ethos and ease of posting on Bluesky. I also am halfway through publishing a second book in installments on Substack and will likely follow with more there simply because it’s easy and I don’t care about making money (did I just hear several gasps from readership?)

There is much more to be said about this topic. It might be worthy of revisiting it collectively in a later group blog. What think you readers?

Gram Della, my sister Kate, and my Uncle Leland. Conversations with these folks were always a joy.