You know what killed this for me?
The stultifying discovery that students are reading my blog.
That terrible moment when one of them
said out loud, “Hey! You have a blog.” My mind flashed through what was
actually written in the thing. Should be okay. Should. But it reminded me I
couldn’t relax.
Imagine my delight when another student walked up to me and
asked, “Your blog isn’t about anything. Why do you write it?”
IT DOESN’T SAY ANYTHING BECAUSE IF IT DID SAY ANYTHING IT
COULDN’T BE SAID!!!!
The question was nevertheless a good one.
The reason it irritated me was because it was true.
A friend of mine recommended that I create a pseudonym and
write under that but I found it overly complicated. Creating false emails,
creating false names. At the end of the day either don’t bother writing or try
to be careful coz’ the damn thing’s in print.
It is SO the age of surveillance.
The age of hypocrisy.
It is amazing though. Has there ever been a time when you
wanted to be published and didn’t have to get a publisher? Then you would argue
about what you could and couldn’t say. Then, carefully come to some agreement
about what was possible to say. What you wanted to say. I believe a lot of
thought went into it. Then it was published. Completed.
Not so much now.
Of course, who the hell is reading it?
It is SO the age of surveillance.
The age of hypocrisy.
The things they will lynch you for are the very things they
themselves wish they could do but pride themselves on some perceived success in
a given area. The travesty committed by all of us on a daily basis is
breathtaking. Scorning someone for being X,Y,Z! Then failing to recognize that
you are judging people for being less than you. That’s what folk are doing when
they let rip about one another. They do THIS?! We pontificate about it because we
don’t do X! “Therefore, I am better than them,” we assure ourselves.
Tragically this has befallen Churchianity. I suppose it must
have always been like this. I call it Churchianity because I don’t know if I
have seen Christianity. Most of what we bring to the table is our particular
background/denomination. Really, if we were Christians we would be absolutely
cool with rubbing shoulders with Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Baptists,
Lutherans, Uniting Church, Anglicans… you get the picture. But we’re quietly
assured that we’ve got it right. We might say, “Hey, we’re not perfect.” But
quietly we think: ‘Yeah, we’re not perfect, but they are MORE not perfect than
us.’
It’s like having a BBQ on a burning ship.
Everyone stares at the sizzling steak while someone casually
says, “I’m glad that fire’s contained.” Meanwhile the ship creaks as somewhere
beams collapse in the crackling heat. We’re all looking at our particular fire
we think is contained while hell breaks loose.
I suspect it’d be like this wherever you work or live.
Where-ever we think we’ve got our particular fire contained you can rest
assured that you shouldn’t rest assured.
Bleak.
Not really. What if it was…fact. What if the things we
thought we were building weren’t really all that important. What if the things
that were really important were the things we rush past each day. That, given
our minds and how they need to be occupied, that we had constructed importance
in the ‘jobs’ we had to do and didn’t take time to have the patience to look
after what we’re supposed to be looking after. Our nearest and dearest.
BORING.
That’s why people fight. It’s interesting. We love gossip.
We love drama. We love to watch the deck collapsing. Provided it’s the ship
across the way from us. We all tut and shake our heads waving empty hands at
the row boats on our ships muttering something about there not being time to do
anything.
I’d like to thank Jo who has said twice to me now that I
should blog. Apparently my quips entertain him and he has expressed that they
should be written down in a blog. It reminded me I needed to write. I am also
reminded that as someone who writes, part of the deal is that someone reads it.
That someone else’s brain rolls the ideas about and appreciates it, considers
it, hates it…whatever.
