Keeping in touch

I've just spent about 2 hours upgrading my phone!! So many choices...mostly colour ones I have to admit. I went for red in case anyone is interested. Girly purple was a bit too 'girly'; we need to keep a good balance of overtly girly stuff! So the phone is just another step in my continuation to embrace technology because I have to say, I'm getting a bit addicted or maybe its procrastination but I love this whole social networking thing. Twitter being my latest venture, although no one is actually following what I post so fingers crossed..

This got me thinking today, how important these things actually are...I mean, as one of the guys from Invisible Children said, what has this generation got a leg up on other generations over...and that is definitely technology. We have so many outlets to voice our opinions, advertise gigs or whatever...just being ourselves as well I guess. I never thought that I would jump onto the Facebook bandwagon, I mean, who wants to hear what I'm up to...but its strange how we yearn to be heard and its amazing how interested we are in other people's lives. Now, perhaps we delve into dangerous territory and risk becoming self involved but I genuinely believe that its pretty cool to embrace who we are and let people see us for that. 

I was thinking the other day about this whole letting people see us for who we are...and perhaps the biggest thing about social networking isn't pushing our personalities but finding common ground with others. Personally, most of my Facebooking involves people from my music course and there's a great sense of common ground amongst musicians because we tend to be in the same boat most of the time and regardless as to whether we chat about music stuff, I still feel close to my friends in that sense. Look at the whole status comment phenomenon...how many of us write comments in reply to others or state that we 'like' this? It's ridiculous when we think about it.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this but I genuinely find it fascinating how progressive generations have found new and maybe sometimes ridiculous ways of keeping in touch like Facebook or Twitter..I don't count Bebo because its, well, crap! 

Last night whilst watching Doubt, I remembered a sermon the priest in it spoke on. He said about how 'doubt' can often be a more powerful tool in bringing people together than our certainty. I completely agree with this because, isn't everyone lost at various points in their lives? Isn't it the one stand out thing that unites us as people? I think so. As a christian, I believe that church is important, I believe that honesty is important and I believe that it is important to get alongside people when they 'doubt' or when they fall or when they feel ashamed because THAT is our human common ground; its not our musical taste or what team we support, its not even whether you liked the colour of phone that I picked. 

Our humanness will always be what brings us together....and I think that is a powerful thing.