I must confess that I rather dislike the internet, and yet I live in a world that thrives on it. Only in the year 2013 can we know exactly  what it is our friends had for breakfast, lunch, dinner, where and what time they ate. We could say that it is one of the most wonderful things ever invented; it supersedes the telephone in communication, and the electronic mail with chatting, organising events simply requires a few keystrokes. Information is made available at our fingertips, and the only limitation we have is our ISP.

    Despite being the most connected and integrated generation to ever walk and live on the face of this planet; we are also the most disconnected, fragmented, edited, filtered, cropped, digitised, and fake generation. Each day, we put up a grander façade than the Victorians ever did, and it was they who pretended that the ugly things of 19th century Britain never existed. And this broken generation, rather use the internet as a tool for communication and information exchange, turned it into a platform of vanity, narcissism, and hedonism.

    I begin again with a statement regarding the last few weeks. In the last few weeks, eight persons within two degrees of relationship of myself have died: six of them I spoke with at least once, two of them related to a friend.  Not once did I not feel this tightness in my chest that reminded me of what it is to be alive, to feel pain in the loss of life.

    When I say pain, I do not mean physical pain. Physical pain is less common and easy to bear; instead, I refer to mental pain, or what people enjoy calling emotional pain. This sort of pain is far less dramatic than physical pain, and is far more common far more difficult to bear. Humans are prone to attempts to conceal such pain, with the dismissive "I'm fine, thank you" or the "I'm okay." Concealing such pain increases the burden, and yet it is easier to say "My back hurts" or "my head hurts" than it is to say 'my heart is broken.'

    The past few weeks have been tiring for me. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. Living in this fast-paced, very connected and highly distorted I-want-it-now culture, I appear to have been left behind by the world in general, as I took time out to slow down and re-connect with my God to pray, to listen and to wait upon Him for answers. Waiting has this intrinsic quality of sitting me down, forcing me to think, moulding me, and pushing me closer to the Lord. While waiting, I find that there are other things for me to do other than mope around and do nothing; things that are undoubtedly designed to prepare me to better receive that which I wait for. And, it just so happens to be one of the most difficult lessons as well.

    Mind you, all of what follows isn't mine. It came to me in one of those spam-like chain emails that people are so fond of forwarding to others these days. I read through it and figured that it was a good set of guidelines to real life. Doing proper research as a good student of literature should do, I found that it comes from a book entitled 50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School by Charles J. Sykes.

    After going through the email, I figured that I want to have a copy of the email where I can easily find it, and possibly expose someone else to the ideas inside that wonderful book, a personal copy of which I still want to get my hands on by the way. If you spot one in the local bookstore, be a dear and let me know, will you? Here we go.

    A couple of weeks ago, I wrote something on the topic on whose opinions should matter.  I rather miss that train of thought, and have explored a somewhat related topic: how what we listen and pay attention to affects our ability to rest.

    People often mistake hearing for listening. Hearing is the passive ability that allows most ordinary human beings to perceive sound by the ear.  Listening, however, is something you consciously choose to do; something you devote some of your attention to in order to process sounds into words, and words into sentences. Listening leads to learning and influence of that which we listen to in our lives. Often paired with our sense of sight, listening and sight are combined to create our daily audio-visual experience, but I digress.

    I am feeling rather sentimental and philosophical, which is a rather positive change considering the current state of things concerning the events and things that have transpired in the last few days. I re-read something that Czeslaw Milosz once wrote. He wrote, 'The sacred exists and is stronger than all our rebellions.'

    Sacred. What exactly is sacred these days? Often times, people think that sacredness implies holiness. Actually, sacred simply means it is set apart for a purpose. Religious values of anything considered sacred is mostly the effect of humans trying to make sense of things beyond our minds to comprehend.