In the Now

I was contemplating life yesterday, and among all of its infinite wonder, I realized that the most important thing is the present. Yes, global warming may destroy Mother Earth, and yes, we probably should not have been dumping toxic waste in the middle of the country, but as a man wiser than myself once said, "Such is life."

Such is life, such is life, such is life. The reason this thought sped across my mind came from a combination of my public speaking class as well as the almighty Instant Messenger. In class, we did an exercise in which each student stood up and had to speak for 1 minute without using a filler. A filler is something you subconsciously say such as "uh" or "um" or "like" or "you know," etc. (Believe me, you use them more than you think...). So 60 seconds is quite a long time when consciously trying to do something you didn't even realize you do. Anyway, it made me think about how mangled colloquial American English has become and how I want to do something about it.

Back to Instant Messenger: I was talking to a friend and she was using all these fillers in her typed messages (I will put the fillers in bold).

Me: Hey, how are you doing?
Her: I mean, I'm ok.
Me: Ok doesn't sound good...
Her: These girls are like being so rude to me

etc. etc.

It really made me sad to see the language written out like this. In the same conversation I was also thinking about the fact that each message is an instantaneous portrayal of oneself through written language. That girl, for example, was made to look like a "dits" or a "bimbo" in those two messages when in fact, she has a 4.0 GPA and was valedictorian of her graduating high school class. Who would've known.

Online journalism takes hold in a similar way. These blogs, for example, are instantaneous responses to the outside world that are being shared with anyone and everyone. Each reader is making a momentary observation which will, in turn, evoke emotion about the writer.

I don't believe that I have any answers to give, or even questions to bring up at this time, but the instantaneous portrayal of oneself is something interesting to think about.