There is something that has been on my mind for quite a while. Being online has continually reminded me of it. My first online community was a MBTI forum for INFPs. As I'm an INFP, it was a very nice experience interacting with people who thought like me. I met one person there who had a thinking pattern that was so extremely similar to mine which was so very odd.
The main problem with that community was that it was fairly small and like many online communities the membership was somewhat transitory. After several people I liked there stopped posting as much, I went looking elsewhere... but I still feel like I'm searching. I joined a dozen or so communities before I finally came to Gaia. I've connected with some here, but I don't always feel like I fit in here.
Connecting in a genuine way is such a difficult thing. Meeting people is easy online, but really connecting is a whole other matter. Part of it has to do with a desire to find people with a commonality of interests. However, its much more fundamental than that as the INFP forum demonstrated. Even though my interests were different than most of the people on that forum, there was such a commonality of life experience that it helped to bridge those differences.
I do feel more at home here than on most sites I've joined. I do suspect that is because there are more people of similar personality types here. A thread in the God Pod showed a preponderance of Introverts, Intuitives, and Feelers (MBTI terminology). Nonetheless, even among stimilar types, the feeling of deep connection is rare and seemingly too little valued in our society. I do know that its more valued amongst INFPs, but even on the INFP forum it was only a few people I really connected with. I don't know what that mysterious element is... its either there or it isn't. Even lesser connections can be nice, but that deeper connection is amazing when it happens.
I remember when I first experienced this kind of connection. It was right after highschool. I was working at a YMCA camp near Asheville, NC. The summer was coming to an end and I was switching to another work area. I met this girl and we connected in a way I'd never experienced before. She was engaged and the connection didn't feel romantic. Its just that we resonated so easily. I felt relaxed and happy around her. This was amazing as I was quite depressed at the time. However, I only got to know her for a short period of time (maybe a week or two) before we went our separate ways and we didn't stay in contact. Life is strange like that. I've never felt that quick of a connection ever again.
Why are connections like this so unusual and so ephemeral? Our longing for connection seems greater than the limits of mortal reality allows. Maybe the longing for connection is more important than the connection itself. In this, I'm influenced by the Sufi emphasis of longing itself. God, if he is anything, is this longing.
Sometime later, maybe the following summer after the YMCA, I was working at the Grand Canyon feeling even more depressed and wishing to escape the world. I met a real nice guy. He was around 50 or so which put him at approximately the same age as my parents, but he seemed younger. He was one of those old hippies who still was trying to live a life of freedom even as age was catching up with him. He was from Arizona and in his after highschool years had fallen in love with nature. He wanted nothing other than to hike and camp. He had been down in the Grand Canyon many times before, but now he was like me working up on the rim making beds and cleaning bathrooms.
I remember one time we went for a walk along the rim. We were away from the village and we stopped at a quiet spot. He was looking out at the Grand Canyon with such longing that I could feel it. That longing is something that has become a part of me and he gave form to it during a particularly despairing time of my life. He couldn't take the longing unsatisfied any longer and he quit. It was torture for him to be able to see the Grand Canyon without being able to go down into it, to explore it, to follow those endless canyons.
I can tell you that I was feeling disatisfied myself at this time and so very lonely. I was tired of the way the world was. Part of me also wanted to just disappear into nature, to escape all the tired expectations of family and society.
After a while, I too decided to quit. I knew someone who was also considering quitting and who had a car. I convineced her to leave with me and go on a road trip since we both planned on heading back to our respective homes which were in the same general direction. She had a friend that she had come to the Grand Canyon with and he wasn't happy to see her go. He told her that "people need people". It seemed like such a silly thing at the time, but its stuck with me after all these years. Its true though... people do need people.
And, yet, people are always leaving. No relationship lasts forever.
I've become very cynical as I've aged, but I must say I was already developing my cynical side as far as back as grade school. Its just become more pronounced with life experience.
A few years ago, I decided to do everything I could to turn my life around. I've always had this side of me that just wants to be a simple good person... a noble endeavor indeed. So, I put myself out into the world and took risks, but it was a struggle even with antidepressants and therapists. I met many people and it was moderately nice despite a part of me that is eternally dissatisfied with all of existence.
I even fell in love for the first time in my life. I wanted to fall in love, but I think I could've made a better choice for the object of my love. It wasn't exactly mutual. Thusly, I came to very intimate terms with my own frustrated longing. Well, at least I know that my longing will always be there for me.
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This blog is linked in three different threads.
OM posted it in the Collective Wisdom pod:
http://pods.gaia.com/collective_wisdom/discussions/view/369016
Meenkashi posted it in the Gaia Networking pod:
Blogs on Community, Interaction, CommunicationI posted it in the God pod:
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Philip K. Dick
January 2009 
Marmalade
Access: Public
44% of the letters are vowels. Of one million first and last names we looked at, 15.8% have a higher vowel make-up. This means you are very well envoweled. 
Your personal power animal is the Greater Roadrunner 
To construct our scenario set we selected two key continua that are likely to influence the ways in which the Metaverse unfolds: the spectrum of technologies and applications ranging from augmentation to simulation; and the spectrum ranging from intimate (identity-focused) to external (world-focused). 
