allow your toes to be stepped on...

...right about now-ish.

Seriously, if you too have a blog, stop for a second, and muster up the necessary courage to read and actually consider the following:

Steve Carter has been facilitating an interesting discussion on stolen content, having a few guest writers share their opinion. My old friend Matt has been featured there, and had an insightful comment to say about blogging in the midst of his response.

The nature of blogging allows us to be irresponsible with our ideas and the ideas of others. There is no authority—not really—holding us accountable if our ideas are ill-conceived, misinformed, or unoriginal. Blogs run the risk of being nothing more than pooled ignorance, stolen ideas, and vain attempts to prove our talents important and our lives valuable...Meaning: we really have no idea what truth lies behind the written words, what the real story is, or if the thoughts presented could legitimately hold any water.

Blogging allows everyone to become a “writer”. Not only does this self-proclaimed title carry with it a false sense of worth from a false giver of value; it fuels a destructive and universal self-centeredness. Now that I am a “writer”, and my “work” is out there for the world to see, I have to keep “writing”. Now that I’ve created a false audience for my life to be lived in front of, people “need” to know what I’m doing, how I’m feeling, and what I’m thinking all the time. This behavior, whether I find it in myself or in others, must be called what it is: immature, disgusting, and sinful.

I miss having Matt and his wife Stephanie's regular input in my life.

Now, I know "community" is a cool word, and I know it's arguably manifested in non-traditional ways on the interwebs, and I know all bloggers can argue the value of blogs, whether it is the catalyst for new friendships, business, or what have you. But I also know that blog stats hyper inflate egos (or conversely, cause insecurity), I know that the internet often perpetuates loneliness and only serves as further distraction from actually addressing and dealing with our ever-present sense of aloneness.

I know, I know....let you without sin cast the first stone if you will....I get it. So let me say and acknowledge the following:

Though I am writing to you, and you will read this, I am, indeed, alone at my computer. At the end of the day, bottom line, I am alone at my computer, and chances are most of you are, too.

Upon further consideration, I want to argue with some of Matt's ideas. But if I am honest, even if just for a fleeting second, the root of those arguments aren't coming from actual fact so much as they come from the discomfort I experience during the brief acknowledgment of the fact that part of the source of my value is being debunked.

In his book, Reaching Out, Henry Nouwen asserts that part of the reason we are so lonely is because we believe the lie that we are meant to take each others' loneliness away.

When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is that he has seen the newspaper, or been out ot tea, and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters proud of his extensive correspondence has not heard from himself this long while.

Henry David Thoreau

******

Sing and dance together and be joyous,
but let each one of you be alone.
Even as the strings of a lute are alone
though they quiver with the same music.
Stand together yet not too near together
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
and the oak tree and the cypress
grow not in each other's shadow.

Kahlil Gibran