Emails, mobile phones, text messages, facebook, twitter, apps and all things internet, the list is exhausting. Suddenly, in a blink of an evolutionary eyelid, we are interconnected like never before, not just with our family and friends, but with total strangers, people we will never meet. I read one journalist saying she could not start the day without knowing what Pink had had for breakfast. She expressed surprise at this herself, and yet, reveled in the triviality of it all, the expansion of her world.
Scientists have recently proved that the brain can become addicted to receiving a text message or email. We all know the tiny pleasure of seeing an unread email, or the sound of a text arriving. It is tiny, because the minute the email is opened or the text is read, the pleasure is gone. It is as effervescent as bubbles themselves. What is it that we are addicted to, and as with all addictions, what is it that we are using the addiction to hide from?
The paradox goes deeper than that. In a world where we can make public the most trivial event, what is the need that is being fulfilled? The need to connect, the fear of being alone. Connecting with others in a meaningful way is the very fabric of life. But the invisible eyes watching us all the time, creates an illusion we are not alone, when every single human being, ultimately is.
It is a great truth of life, one that has burned in the minds of the greatest of scholars and mystics, seeking an answer. Facebook and twitter merely put a sticky plaster over the wound. Healing will only come when we discover that it is love which heals the wound, crosses the distances, bridges the great divide.
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