Conversation is Dying

I was walking into work the other day, checking my twitter and facebook as usual, and a thought hit me: real relationships are dying in our culture.

The Holy Spirit has consistently brought to mind truth about relationships over the past few weeks. And as I thought about twitter/facebook and the effect its having on our my day to day life, I realized that a shift is occurring. All of us have a deep, motivating desire for relationships with other people. However, relationships are scary. They hurt. Friends betray, fail to meet expectations, don’t meet our level of commitment, fade away, etc. It takes extreme vulnerability to have a real relationship. Vulnerability is scary. Vulnerable means “susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm.” It comes from the Latin word vulnerare, which means to wound. It takes a lot of courage to open yourself up to that possibility. You have to overcome very real fear to do so. After all, if relationships are the only things that really matter, it would make sense that they can be the most wounding.

But ah, we have facebook/twitter/texting/etc.  Now here is an opportunity to have some of the benefits of relationship without the vulnerability. We have opened this whole realm of pseudo-relationship where we can say things we would never say in person. We can know things about other people, and tell people things about ourselves in a sort of protected exposure. Face to face conversation is dying. And even when we do get to that real face to face conversation, it’s getting harder to talk because I already know some of what you are going to say. I read it on twitter, or I saw it on your facebook status. So why ask? In all this, I think the next generation is suffering the most. We can at least remember what it’s like to be without all this (forgetting more and more everyday). But middle schoolers and high schoolers don’t. They are learning life this way.

We are so plugged in, we are losing the ability to look each other in the eye. Having an intimate conversation with someone opens you up to ridicule, rejection, judgement… But in that moment of vulnerability, you can be met with the same defenselessness. There is where real relationship begins to lay a solid foundation. There is nothing wrong with talking about movies, video games, other people (to a degree), tv shows, or the weather. However, when you open yourself up to someone else, you are telling them that you trust them and you value them. I think we are getting to a place, as a society, where we can’t even have those surface conversations, let alone the real ones.

This opens up a whole new thought for me, about why people suffer. Well, not so much why, but why its beneficial. When I am in a place of hurt or brokenness, I need real people right there with me. If I was always in a state of elation, I wouldn’t really feel a need for others (and therefore, God). Even when I have overcome said disappointments, it puts me in a place of understanding. Or in a place where I can open up that old door to someone in an effort to be vulnerable and therefore create that foundation for a lasting friendship. Today my mom and dad were talking about suffering, and how its just a fact of life. And I hate that it is a fact of life, but when I step outside of it, I am so very very thankful for it. There is connectedness there when you are brought to the end of yourself and you need someone else. But anyways, thats my side-road.

Obviously, we cannot be vulnerable with every person we come in contact with. And vulnerability takes time. But it was already hard enough as it is, and I feel like our technology and “connectedness” is giving us a cop-out option. Loneliness is a motivation to cultivate relationships. And now we can be alone and “connected.” It has so many benefits, but in this respect I believe its dangerous.

It will be interesting to see how this “connected” generation grows up and functions later on (and us too).