So, as I was jumping on to Twitter this morning, eager to suss out juicy marketing tidbits, see what Jordin Sparks or Adam Lambert's up to now, and to find out how the holy grail of "how many people are following me now" indicator was doing (oh joy…the number of followers has tripled in the last week), I had a sardonic thought that rang a bit more true for me than I liked as it went through the old noggin: "Have I replaced alcohol, cigarettes, other drugs, and other addictions with Twitter and Facebook?" Not long after that question, the next pesky ones popped out: "Now that I have almost 100 people following me on Twitter, and a boatload of Facebook friends, do I feel more connected?" "Do I have a greater sense of community and friendship that's soothing that quiet (or, apparently, not so quiet) inner need to belong and be included?"
The clear answer came back, much to my chagrin and illumination, "Well….uh, no…not really." I feel like I know a very little bit about a bunch of folks who are "out there somewhere," but I don't know them nor do they know me. With Facebook, I notice I feel a bit more of a sense of personal connection, because so many people on FB are really sharing their hearts, their lives, and their life walk. With Twitter (at least with those whom I'm following), I hear a lot more about what they can do for me, I learn more ways to simplify my life by having a gazillion funny looking links I can click on to get a free entree into future services, and I rarely know a single thing about "who are these people, really?"
Now, I don't want to be disingenuous. Part of why I got onto Twitter and Facebook was because I kept hearing it's the best way to get – yes, connected – and the main gig for getting your face and your work plastered all over Kingdom Come. There's no disputing that that's possible…I have the 90-some-odd people following me right now, of whom I personally know about 7. So, there's at least 85 people that know I exist – without really knowing diddly about me…yet – but I don't have any idea of who they are, what they love and what they don't (other than their businesses and/or pursuit of all the Nirvana that the Law of Attraction has people chasing after), and I also don't really know if they are getting my essence yet; or, at least, whatever essence I can convey in 140 characters or less.
I wanted Twitter and FB to help grow my business, and it's very likely it will. However, is it going to grow me? If it's true that there are somewhere between 5-10 million people Tweeting, Tweeping, Twitting, and Twatting their life away at their keyboards, trying to get more "connected," and if, say, only a 10th of them are really finding that their sense of personal, social, and spiritual connection is increasing as a result (a totally arbitary number, by the way), doesn't it make you wonder what's happening for the other umpty-million folk who may have to be pried from their keyboards and touch-pads kicking and screaming, in terms of a greater, healthier connection to life and Spirit?
So, while I confess to being on the verge of being a TwittBook junkie, I'm grateful that I've had the opportunity to have a moment of spiritual sobriety this morning. I'm grateful that, as I held my wife this morning and felt both her body and love pressing into me, I remembered that s/he who lives by the keyboard could die by the keyboard…literally and figuratively.
As you ponder that, and any relevancy of these musings to your life and being, I invite us all to simply bring more awareness to what we're doing, to why we're doing it, to what we're wanting from doing it…and, are we getting more connected as a result?
See you next time! Thanks for reading and commenting. Heck, let's make this a cyber-dialogue…it might help us get more connected!!!
