Life’s little surprises

Sometimes a post in this blog or someone else’s turns into what I call an offline conversation. Sometimes the email exchange ends up being longer than the original post. Other times a post here turns into a reply post there. What I am aluding to is the conversations that in a variety of ways that spring up out of blog posts.

Until I started blogging and getting involved in these sorts of conversations, it hadn’t really occurred to me what develops out of those discussions. Even though we are not likely to meet the authors of many of the the blogs we read, there are 2 hidden bonuses in blog reading and writing. First, I think our society conditions us from early age to judge people by where and how they live, what possessions they (eg. what they drive), what they look like and how they dress. However much we might struggle against that, it is always there and we have to watch for it trying to make decision about people for us. The beauty of blogging is that you often do not have any of that to go by. And you are really left with the things that the person talks about and how they say them to decide if they are someone you would like to get to know better.

For example, CS Lewis died when I was a small child. But I have read alot of his writing. I think he is someone I’d love to sit and talk to. I can imagine us talking away an afternoon and not even noticing it slip away. If his writing is representastive of how he thought, then we approach problems in much the same way.

Second, I believe that because most of us were dropped into a room of 25-30 strangers at an early age, whenever we encounter someone IRL which we know nothing about we keep the conversation to safe topics. My experience teaching at college leads me to believe that one of the strongest lessons learned in PS is guarding one’s private person.

When I started writing here, there were things that I wanted to talk about. And for most of those subject I have. It hadn’t really occurred to me that the reason I wanted to write about those subjects was that both that the subjects themselves and talking about them were important to me. Shortly after that, I realized that many of the bloggers that I read were also writing for the same reason. TBH, I think that most of the time our society offers us little opportunity to do that.

So, what I think I’m trying to get to is the thought that in many respects I’ve gotten to know some of you through a sort of virtual exchange better than some people who I’ve known most of my life. The thing is that underlying it all is that the things that are important to us have alot to do with defining who we are. And talking to people about things that are important to them is the best way to get to know them. I’ve discovered that I like doing this far more than I expected I would. There are bloggers out there who aim to attract as many readers as possible. I realized a few months ago, that I wasn’t interested in that. I think I’ve collected something which is far more valuable than the revenue that could be generated by high volume traffic.