Unveiling the Opacity

Perhaps if Ponce de Leon was searching for the fountain of youth, he was born 500 years too early.  We have discovered the holy grail, the everlasting existence, the eternal life that is attributed to him so desperately seeking.  The internet has opened a door allowing all those who dare enter to creep through, so that we can create a permanent record of our existence: Shouting, "WE ARE HERE!" Our perpetual need for our 15 minutes of fame, or to live on infinitely has finally arrived.  

Technology has gained tremendous traction in the past 15 years, and has unveiled much of the mystery, fog, and opaqueness that once surrounded differing cultures.  It gives us a multitude of opportunities our ancestors could never have dreamed; and while we sit behind our keyboards fiercely defending, persuading, admiring, and praising ourselves, we rarely take an opportunity to examine one very important component that seems lost in our ever advancing quest. Tonight I simply wax poetic for the moments when I could have an egg for breakfast, without feeling the desire to hash-tag it to the world. I prefer to hear the birds tweeting, while drinking my morning juice than that of an incessant montage of updates on trivial matters.

The real problem lies in what our dependence upon this source has stolen, quite surreptitiously: our privacy.  Transparency has infiltrated our everyday lives to the point where privacy is no longer an option if you want to stay attuned to the global heartbeat pounding inside the machine.  While some prefer to stay shrouded under the cloak of an abacus or an Elvis shrine, most of us want to continue to journey forward, in search of what awaits us in the next realm.  In order to do so, we often sacrifice the curtains that hide the windows of our souls, so that we may fully engage in the experience that has  engulfed our electronic highway.  We text, we post pictures, we blog, we Facebook, we "Like", all in an effort to make our digital voices heard, so that our digital footprint stands out like a Sasquatch's in a sea of small pixelated footprints. 

Please don't mistake the fact that I enjoy and I am as fascinated by the internet and all of it's technological glory as most.  I want to remain current and relevant, but there is a small voice that occasionally reverberates within me that misses a time when it was irrelevant how much ice cream you devoured last night while sorting through your complicated relationship. However, it is the world in which we now live, and as hypocritical as it may seem, I am jumping into the proverbial frying pan so that I too may send a barrage of thoughts into this eternal spring, proclaiming, "I AM HERE!"