Our Deep Loss Of Intimacy & How To Save The World.

This was going to originally be a publication about the reason of why I don’t congratulate my friends by just putting a meaningless “Happy stupid birthday” on their Facebook Walls. Ok, without the stupid word.

But it became much more.

I looked deeper into the loss of intimacy we have experienced. Not that I’m too old, but I think I get it. I think we all get it.

Once upon a time I decided it was pointless to just write someone on one of their most important days in life – the celebration of the day they were brought  into the world while crying for breath.

It is pointless because we live in a mega fast phased world in which every little of information needs to fight with each other for attention. It’s an information brawl. Nothing is safe, I suffer from short memory loss, for real, you can ask my partner about it. I have thought of it, but before putting it on ‘paper’ or whatever this is, I didn’t take it seriously.

I’m always on the clouds—figuratively and with the internet quite literally— thinking about something, so much that I miss some stuff that is happening right in front of me or I just don’t hear something I actually replied to.

Sometimes I’m just on auto. Auto-replying, auto-watching, auto-reading.

Has it ever happened to you? You are reading and suddenly you find yourself thinking about something else, but in the back of your mind you continue to read, words continue to be poured magically into your personal black-hole.

Oh, am I the only one? I don’t think so.

The point is, I don’t remember sh*t of what I read, even though the voice in my head reading all those words never shut up and my eyes continued to scan them all.

Lack of attention.

Lets all stop Auto-living.

That brings me back to my loss of intimacy point. We have so many ‘friends’ and so many ‘known people’ that it is just too hard to keep track of them all.

Historically, the amount of people a Human could keep track of was up to 150 people, around that amount, take it or leave it.

The amount comes from what a village used to be, what a big survival group used to be, a family. 150 continuously interacting individuals who more or less knew each other and all the connections between them.

But now we have 500 Facebook ‘friends’. And I’m being conservative since there are plenty of people with friends up to the thousands. In case you are thinking on it, the average of user’s friends on Facebook is about 200.

That’s way more of the highest amount of what we used to be able to keep track of. Yeah sure, you can always blame the hyper connectivity and the social media exposure plus the ability of this systems to keep track of your loved ones for you.

But anyway. Too many people, too much information, too little time and brain power / focus.

Every “Happy Birthday” is just lost in a sea of others wishing the same to either your loved one or that random person you know the last name of just because it is on their –again– Facebook account. No one is really desiring to stand up too much, because the fear of being socially different goes deep inside all of us. That kills those amazing unborn words and possible poems that you should be receiving from ever happening.

How is it worth it, at all, to write a pointless, flavorless and meaningless congratulations?

It is quite sad to see people congratulating fathers for their baby boy - baby girl using no more than 10 words. Ten words! For Cow’s sake. A new Human being was born, those people lives just changed for ever and you can’t use more than 10 words? Which by the way, are more or less the same as all the other 10 words used before you.

Come on people. Let’s get creative shall we?

If there is no real value, there is no real reason to create a something, anything really, be it on someone’s “Wall” or in general life. If there is no real value, there is no real reason for most things. Just as you don’t see people buying extremely over-priced stuff. The price is the payment for value.

No value = no price worth.

No value on words used = giving a little of a sh*t.

By the way sorry for the bad words. I’ve noticed I really like using those for making emphasis. Back to the point!

There is something beautiful that can only be achieved when two people collide. An explosion of intimacy that we seem to be forgetting more and more.

I didn’t live back in the time of writing a perfect letter, having almost limitless time to think of each and every word, to write each one of them with the best possible hand writing and the most expensive ink available, just to create a little bubble of intimacy through a letter that will take days, weeks, months, who knows if years to arrive to the desired receiver.

If it arrives at all.

I have a letter of someone, it is at the bottom of a box somewhere in the world. It used to be full of that person’s aroma.

The letter created a sort of intimacy bubble, a pact between two strangers to maybe keep a secret, our secret. A pact and a bubble that no digital message can ever, ever duplicate or wish to.

But we try to. I try to.

I wish my best wishes and blessings  to people to whom I know I can create something slightly beautiful for. Short? Most likely yes, but beautiful.

I want to be the creator of those little bubbles of intimacy with the people who I have met  across my short and amazing life, if that person has earned the right and my desire to write something beautiful for her/him, then I should make an effort. I want them to know I care, to know that they are not just another name and picture in an ocean of names and pictures.

I do care. About all of you.

And we tend to forget that people care about us.

Maybe it is time to start remembering how much we should care about others. What is obvious is sometimes easily forgotten, I was told once.

Maybe it is time to understand that happiness is to make someone else smile.

Because if we all make each others smile by caring for each other slightly more, then we will save the world.

Maybe.