A wonderful place...

The Internet, I mean.

I got an e-mail this morning from the great-granddaughter of Charles Goulder, the man whose copies of Shakespeare's plays (well, some of them, at least) I have. She told me a bit more about the man (she was not aware of the building he was developing in Cleveland).

I like that. That little connection there. Sometime back (I can't find it now in the archives), I wrote about how one of the things I liked about blogging was that connection...the idea that you were throwing out your little ideas before the world, and, in the best of situations, someone will find those ideas interesting - or those ideas will resonate with them - and you and that person will have almost a little conversation (or even a real conversation, via e-mail or in the comments or on Twitter, if you're both on twitter and mutually follow). It amazes me that people who have never met in person can communicate over the Internet.

And you know, I like that. I like the fact that it bridges distances that might otherwise be unbridgeable. And I like that a lot of the baggage that can affect an interpersonal relationship - what someone looks like, how they dress, what ethnicity they are, if they have obvious disabilities - don't matter. Except for the few fellow-bloggers of whom I have seen pictures (or the vanishingly few I've met in person), I don't know what anyone looks like. And I'm fine with that. (And I do think appearance plays a role, unfortunately, in how you react to a person if you don't already "know" them. I've seen it happen to people I know who use walkers or canes because of knee trouble - occasionally they get treated as if it's their brains, and not just their knees, that are messed up. And I know: probably a lot of people see "walker" and immediately relate it to "person who has had a stroke," but that's not true of EVERYONE using a walker. And not even everyone who's had a stroke and has physical difficulties is going to have mental difficulties...)

But I like blogging, and I like reading blogs, because it is a chance to have conversations of a sort on whatever topics...I still read a fair number of craft-blogs, in part, because I don't know too many people around me who do crafts (Other than scrapbooking, which, I'm sorry, but that's one craft I just can't get into too much.)

Also, it's a chance to "be heard." When I get comments, I feel like people are "hearing" me. (The Incurable Insomniac had a pretty powerful post (at least, it resonated with me) on the concept of being "heard" versus not being "heard":

"Not being heard is one of humanity's greatest problems. It always has been. That's why everyone is so crazy. Loud car stereos, loud ring tones, yelling, shouting, bad behavior--even Twitter and Facebook. HEAR ME! I MATTER! I HURT! I'M AFRAID!

Oh, this seems SO true to me. I've seen it in students - they come in all loud and blustering, upset about something, and if I sit and calmly listen, instead of trying to talk over them (which may be what some other people have done in the past), they often calm down and realize the problem isn't so huge.

And sometimes I see it in colleagues...that the anger they are expressing isn't so much anger at the PERSON or the SITUATION but the fact that they're not being heard.

And I've felt that myself. This past August, I had a situation where I had a run-in with another person, where they just talked over me, they talked down to me, they treated me (I felt) like I was a child. And it REALLY upset me. Upset me to the point where I broke one of my cardinal rules and cried - and it was an "ugly" cry, too - in front of a colleague. (Fortunately he was someone who understood the concept of "running out of cope" and someone who had a run-in with the same person I was so frustrated by).

(Actually, I find in my case, when I'm completely fed up, frustrated, and feel like I'm not being heard, I'm FAR more prone to burst into tears than I am to get angry. That probably has something to do with my Female Socialization in this society: it's perceived as more OK for a woman to cry than to get angry, just as it's often perceived as more OK for a man to get angry than to cry. Of course, when you're the kind of woman who doesn't like crying in front of others - because you're afraid it will make you seem weak or manipulative - you're kind of stuck. And I'm not good at expressing anger; I never have been.)

and "Sometimes when I sound peeved or critical, I'm really just in pain"

(Actually - I think not just emotional pain there for me. I can tell that when I'm physically hurting - like when the bursitis was bothering me so badly - I had to consciously remind myself that it wasn't other people's faults that I hurt, and that I needed to be nice to them.)

So, not being heard being a big problem, it is lovely when you ARE heard. Or lovely when you get that little blip of connection - "That person you talked about on your blog and wondered about him? I'm his descendant."

Or when you say "I know I'm weird but here's this thing I do" (Like for me - running a knuckle along the painted-brick wall in the hall of my building as I walk between classrooms) and having someone else reply and say, "I do that too."

Or if you ask a question, and someone else responds.

Or if you post that something sad happened to you, and other people offer their sympathy.

I know, I know: cynics will say that they don't "really" feel, that they're just offering a social nicety, that the only "correct" type of connection is a direct-in-person one. But I don't know. As someone who often DOES feel "weird" in her peer-group (simply by virtue of not having married and had kids - and right now there are precious few people in my "meatspace" world within 10 years of my age who are not in the situation of married or married-with-kids), it helps to have the big wide wild world of the internet to be able to find other people who, as a commenter recently said, enjoy "single blessedness" (and that makes me smile, because I think of that as SUCH a 19th century term, but I mean that in the best possible way). Or someone else who's as obsessed by sock yarn as I am. Or whatever.

I would argue that if someone takes the time and effort to comment (and it's a small effort, but it's still an effort), they're making some kind of a connection.

I know among some commentators it's (still) popular to run down the Internet - it's stealing our privacy, some say. It's a morass of filth, others say ("Hide your kids! Hide your wife!"). It's making us stupid, still others say. (Just because I can speak in LOLcat doesn't mean I've given up on standard English. And I don't think there's anything wrong with finding stupid things funny.)

I don't know. The internet, as I see it, is a tool. All tools can be used well or be used badly. Most of them can be used to help or to harm. (The same scalpel that removes a cancerous tumor could be used to stab a person). And as for "morass of filth" - well, there are dirty books in the library, too. Just because they're there doesn't mean I have to read them.

I don't know. My online experiences have been MOSTLY positive. I think part of that is I don't hang out in the more-dangerous quarters. And because I generally make an effort to treat the people I run across with respect. (And, I suspect, not having a high-profile or popular blog helps as well...it seems that the more visible a blog is, the more likely it is to attract those sorts of creatures that tend to live under bridges and try to eat billy goats gruff.)