“The happiest people don’t have the best of everything… They just make the best of everything that they have.” —Author Unknown
THIS is one of my favorites since I constantly have to remind myself about the wisdom of logging off and living in real time. So here goes — Once more with feeling ……
I am doubling down and taking my own piece of advice. Unless absolutely necessary, I intend to be logged off for longer periods of time. How else can I SAVOR THE MOMENT except by living real life in real time with as fewer hours as possible spent on the internet? Plus my eyes are getting fried with too much screen time and I am bent out of shape.
Communication has become efficient, almost done by rote, and sometimes borders on the cold and impersonal. I still don’t enjoy being part of a global network to be used for someone’s nefarious purpose.
I REFUSE TO BE A PRODUCT TRADED ON WALL STREET. Yes, I am kicking and screaming. There’s a stubborn part of me that rebels and chafes at becoming part of a statistic. I resent being used for the purpose of advancing some corporate, progressive, manipulative, globalist, evil agenda.
There are giant companies who really don’t produce anything of real value. These are companies who mine data, yours and mine, from social networking sites. They store this gigantic hoard of public information in mega databases.
These are then sold to interested parties as valuable psychographic information. Companies package, repackage and sell personal information with the sole purpose of manipulating the mass behavior of citizens in a free society.
It stinks to high heaven when the powers that be use information for social engineering and political purposes. We don’t have journalists seeking truth. We have “narrative engineers” spin doctoring, hoaxing and scamming entire populations. Information has become gold nuggets. He who controls information has POWER. In the hands of evil manipulators, information has become a tool that can be used by network owners to enrich themselves. They can skew election results to grab and stay in power and ensure the flow of money into their bank accounts.
With blatant, unlawful NSA snooping on anything electronic by any citizen these days, can the Gestapo thought police be far behind?
I doubt if my opinions on a twitter account holds any gravitas to twitterverse users. Saying something by tweeting on anything can and will be held against you. A screen grab of your comment makes it permanent. Why give anyone any ammo? The number of users following you is supposed to be an indication of your fan base. Few things on the net, particularly regarding the ego, are real, however.
I heard some enterprising company lets you claim thousands of fake twitter followers who purportedly follow your tweets. That goes for a fee, of course. The internet has become the de facto hothouse for growing gigantic egos.
We’ve all become easy targets for privacy intruders. Nothing seems sacred or private anymore. There’s more than enough out there in the public records to fill a dossier on anyone with an SSN or a pulse. We are living in the throes of the Information Age and the currencies being traded are bits and bytes of information. It’s like living in glass houses these days. There’s too much naked transparency.
As an ordinary, private individual, I am downright resentful. Celebrity is now a curse rather than a blessing. Witness the public meltdown of Hollywood celebrities whose lives more often than not, serve as cautionary tales. Because obscurity is becoming rare these days, it has become all the more precious. The lesser known you are, the better for you in many instances.
No wonder our sense of mystery and awe at anything in this life is fast eroding. I regard social networking with a bit of trepidation and suspicion. And frankly, who’s got the time? I am probably one of a vanishing breed, always itching to get out of the virtual world and into the real world of doing things in private, without fanfare: creating, fixing, cooking, gardening, making memories and connecting personally and laughing until my sides are nearly split. By choice, I would prefer to be offline and often unwired on the weekends. My personal motto: LOG OFF AND LIVE.
There’s so much living yet to do: so many recipes to try, seeds to plant, topiaries to shape, weeds to pull, walls and blank canvasses to paint, places to see, photos to shoot, plays to watch, games to play, puzzles to solve and mysteries to unravel, books to read, people to meet, goals to achieve, skills to learn and courses to take, stuff to give away, stories to write, naps to take and a thousand and one more things to feel, see, touch, taste, hear and soak in before the end game. With all that’s in the past, life still feels like a tabula rasa —lots of living to do, so little time. BIG SIGH …
I am picking and choosing from the constant flow of messages in my inbox, only this one below. Some of these forwarded messages are for laughs, others inform while some can make you think harder or even move you to take action. Pet peeves are those that are pure drivel and chain emails with a punitive clause, like a curse of bad luck, if you fail to forward. For malevolent messages and all the rest of the junk from scammers promising riches, simplify your cyberlife and hit DELETE. DO NOT ENGAGE. Better yet, mark them as SPAM.
Sometimes a golden nugget comes through that deserves to be amplified. So simple, it hits you right between the eyes. I searched for the author’s name but like many other pieces flung by anonymous, creative beings in Cyberville, authorship is largely unknown and unclaimed. To the originator of this metaphor then, whoever you are and wherever you may be, please accept a profound THANK YOU, from the rest of us. Here it is.
THE HOT CHOCOLATE STORY
A group of graduates, well established in their careers, were talking at a reunion and decided to go visit their old university professor, now retired. During their visit, the conversation turned to complaints about stress in their work and lives. Offering his guests hot chocolate, the professor went into the kitchen and returned with a large pot of hot chocolate and an assortment of cups-porcelain, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite — telling them to help themselves to the hot chocolate.
When they all had a cup of hot chocolate in hand, the professor said: ‘Notice that all the nice looking; expensive cups were taken, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. The cup that you’re drinking from adds nothing to the quality of the hot chocolate. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was hot chocolate, not the cup; but you consciously went for the best cups… And then you began eyeing each other’s cups.
Now consider this: Life is the hot chocolate; your job, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life. The cup you have does not define, nor change the quality of life you have. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the hot chocolate we have. The happiest people don’t have the best of everything… They just make the best of everything that they have.
Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly.
= LOG OFF.
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Nota Bene: Monette Adeva Maglaya is SVP of Asian Journal Publications, Inc. To send comments, e-mail [email protected]