It’s easy to get wrapped up in your own immediate experience, isn’t it? And sometimes necessary.
But this morning as I hung around on Twitter and Facebook for a while, and read the BBC news, I realised again just how powerfully diverse yet universal our human experience is.
In a few short minutes, I understood the extent of the appalling bush fires in drought-ridden Australia, was introduced to a story of repentance that gave me hope and found a new (to me) organisation called Low Carbon Communities that’s doing great work.
I know that a couple of on-line friends are experiencing pain and sorrow today, and that others are jubilant and having fun. At least one blogging friend is close to the path of the Australian fires.
There’s danger in experiencing life from behind the safety of an internet connection, but equally it can lead us to a visceral understanding that we are one global community made of up local groups and individuals. One world.
Epiphany Girl wrote a great post about this a while back in which she quoted a comment by Blisschick, which I was reminded of today. Here’s what Blisschick said:
The internet is, quite simply, the new town square. Nothing more and nothing less, and in that square, there are utter idiots yelling at the tops of their lungs about crap, but there are small tables surrounded by people having true, powerful discourse. There are people handing out pamphlets. People on soap boxes. And then there are people strolling through, feeling a bit more alive, a bit more connected just by observing.
“A bit more connected”. That’s what we are today as we build new ways of joining hands around the world.
If you want to reach out a hand to the devastated communities of Southern Australia, you can do so here, via the Red Cross.
Image by Malias
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I love love love this quote, and am so glad to catch you in the square from time to time.
You too Rachel. Hugs.
Oh yayy! More food for the soul to tell me that it is good to be back in this town square of interconnection. There are so many dear and open hearts like yours that I cannot forget.
Thanks and blessings,
Marisa
i had missed the quote about the town square. it is so absolutely perfect and spot on! i read an article in people magazine (while getting a pedicure, of course) about a young widowed father who had started a blog. the community that came around him was astounding for most people – him included. however, it rang so true to me and spoke of the type community i have found in my own little blogging corner of the town square.
so glad you are part of my community. you help broaden my world! (i finally had the nerve to peak at twitter, but quickly closed it. think i’ll stick with blogging and facebook for a little while
) xoxo
The town square
It’s true! 
I don’t know anyone directly affected by the bushfires. I am about 10km from the centre of Melbourne, and the fires are about 1.5 hours’ drive away from where I am. Still – that’s pretty close. It’s quite numbing, really, to know that towns I have visited and know have been razed to the ground. Incomprehensible, really
Hello, Tess.
I began my day by reading this post and will end it by writing a comment. So insightful, so true. It’s the connection with people (like you) that brings me online everyday.
@Lucy: I’m so glad you’re around on the town square. Twitter is really weird and a bit scary to start off with, but lots of people refer to it as ‘hanging round the water cooler’, or as we would say in Britain ‘having a tea break’. Jump into the stream of conversation then jump back again, don’t try to follow everything or catch up with what happened while you were away.
@Sue: 1.5 hours’ drive is horribly close. It must be a bit like knowing your old school or something has been demolished but still not believing it. I’m very glad you’re OK.
@Elaine: Thank you very much, what a great web of connections we have.
Hi Tess,
I have a website on Emily Dickinson which focuses on 32 of her nature-mystic poems, each on its own page -— and by far the poem that gets the most hits (via Google) is not the most “social” one, but rather her “Solitude of Space” -— and I think that is good, because the best way to love others and to care about the world, truly is to know Thyself:
There is a solitude of space
A solitude of sea
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be
Compared with that profounder site
That polar privacy
A soul admitted to itself —
Finite infinity.
~ Emily Dickinson
___
kigen
kigen, thank you so much for your comment and for introducing me to the richness of your website. This poem is beautiful. I love the rhythm of it, the way the words flow into one another.
Hi Tess, Tho geographically we are distant, heart to heart we are close! Glad to be in the square with you and these delightful others.
I’m reminded of the motto of the American Field Service, an organization who brought 3 exchange students to my high school (long ago and far away). These teens from Australia, the Philippines, and Switzerland were my first friends from overseas. The AFS motto:
“Walk together, talk together, o ye peoples of the world. Then, and only then, will there be peace.”
Maybe the internet is one important pathway to peace? I hope so!
Tess, great post and such a lovely window into this virtual community. How wonderful our town square can reach so far and wide and include so many in on the powerful conversation if they so choose.
Great post!
Thanks for your lovely comments, Barbara Anne, Christine and Molly.
“The town square image” and quote just beautiful and so right on with your comments. The internet does bring us all together quickly whether we like it or not……I mean we can tune out if we wish. The internet I believe has brought a new depth of wonder to my spiritual life, to my daily life – which is my spiritual life….I guess I should say a new depth to the activities I engage in – wow, you’ve caught me all tongue-tied here. At any rate, I feel closer to my world-wide neighbors, I am saddened and troubled by news of a mine-collapse in China, a tourist bus crash, the deaths in the deadly Australian fires, the horror of my nation’s fires in CA where the death toll has been low but the danger of death is imminent when young men and women are fighting the fires. The internet highlights our world’s weaknesses and with some hope I believe it could strengthen the world as well. You got me goin’ here – your posts are truly inspirational. Thanks Tess.
xoxo
SS, thank you so much. I often think there are bad things also about our instantaneous connections – for example I wonder whether our economical problems have been fanned by global press speculation causing panic, although I’m not knowledgeable enough to be sure. But the sort of examples you mention can strengthen our compassion for others and give us the ability to help if we can by way of donations etc.
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