Hey all. I know I’m late again. This time I have a small excuse. I had to work the last few days, so writing my blog slipped my mind. And my mother’s birthday caught me unprepared, so I was scrambling for that too. Now, I bet it might not seem very important to most of you readers whether or not I post by a certain time, but it’s important to me. I started this blog as a writing discipline, so I need to work on being more disciplined.
However, I did not come to write about that. I did come to write about life. And I’ll admit, I’m writing about my life. So far, it’s the best tool for finding writing material I’ve found. So here goes….
These days, I’ve really been missing my friends from college. And as much as I try to control it, it seems at times to get only worse. It’s been driving me nuts as I try to figure out why I can’t control it. Usually, I’m better at keeping my emotions under control, but these won’t be tamed. And it’s taken me a while of simply talking with myself to figure some of the problem out. Yes Talking with yourself can be a good thing, because the longer you talk to yourself and express what you wouldn’t dare say in front of anyone else, you dig down and discover the problem.
So the problem is that I miss experiencing the reality of my friends. I know, that seems like a no-brainer. I already said I miss my friends. But it’s more than just missing them. I can interact with them on Facebook, email, and Skype. I can text them to share funny things with them. But that doesn’t give me any fulfillment. I miss the reality of them.
I miss seeing their faces. I miss hearing their voices. I miss the smells, the laughs, the fun. I miss having ridiculous conversations full of inside jokes. I miss hearing stories about things both serious and humorous. I miss staying up late watching movies or praying with people I love, and who, for some unfathomable reason, love me too.
(Now, warning, I might get a little preachy here.)
Facebook can’t and won’t replace real relationships, despite what so many people fear. The fact is that it isn’t real enough to replace people. And that is what I miss.
Right now, all I have inside are images of my friends. I say “images” kind of borrowing from C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed. He talks about how all he seems to have left of his wife is his image of her. But that image is inferior to the real her. And I have to say the same about my own images, my own memories.
What I think and what I remember is a pale reflection of the real people I long for. Memories and images don’t work in reality. I can manipulate the images, move them however I want, warp my view of a person until they become who I want them to be. Memories I can speed up, slow down, fast forward and reverse, like a video. Again I can manipulate that.
I can’t manipulate people the way I do images. They don’t fit into the holes I create for them. They aren’t the shiny or sooty things I warp the images to be. I have to deal with people as they are. Their fallacies, their desires, their humor, their joys. I can’t create that in my mind. I can only remember. I can change my memory, but it doesn’t match reality. Reality has to be superior. Not because reality supersedes imagination, but because it is deeper, richer, and more vibrant than my paltry imagination can conceive.
So no matter how advanced computers become, they can’t replace people. No matter how good of an imagination I have, I cannot imagine reality. I guess that’s another reason God is so amazing. He can create reality from His imagination. He can conceive all our layers, our depth. He knows us intimately and doesn’t have to worry about dealing with images that don’t match the real person. He made the real one.
Thankfully He gave me people I actually miss, and who I know care about me. For now I must wait and long for them until we meet again. But God is good. He loves me, and will sustain me.
No comments:
Post a Comment