One of the the great loves of my life contacted me last night on Facebook. Twenty-four years have passed since we last spoke, not because of any bad feelings though, our lives just followed different paths. During the course of our chat on Facebook we caught up as best we could through that forum. She's happily married with three beautiful kids now. Trying to fill her in on my life over these many years was difficult because for some strange reason I wanted her to be proud of me. I have enjoyed life but have little to show for my years and quite a few less than happy events so I worked around those parts as best I could, often using the common notation of three dots (you know - "..." ) to indicate there is more information. She made the comment
"those three dots can cover a lot more than can be typed on fb." That simple statement really packed a punch for me. How true
it is! There was so much more I wanted to tell her and hear from her and yet all I could do was type three little dots.
I believe those three dots are indicative of how we are losing our ability to communicate in an informative and meaningful way in the 21st century. Several times I've had arguments with female friends over something I texted or didn't text in a message. We try to shorten and abbreviate just about everything we do and it only serves to make life more complicated - especially when I'm dealing with my female friends (sorry ladies it's true - my guy friends could care less about a deeper or hidden meaning behind my emoticons and abbreviations). As a result I try not to live by my phone anymore. I answer fewer and fewer text messages and when I do I keep it to short simple answers, questions and statements. Of course that has it's drawbacks to as a couple of my lady friends want to know why I'm being so curt when I text them! It seems I can't win!
