the culture
of texting and chatting. i'm not quite old enough not to claim it as my generation but as
the rebellious continent-confused
nostalgic francophone Lebanese, i never quite claimed it or enjoyed it.
to be
truthful, texting does appeal to me as a means of conversation, avoiding all
the necessary polite tournures de phrases before
addressing the issue you just wasted seven minutes of your life introducing. i find it hard to relate, empathize and love over the phone so: straight to the point and saving precious minutes here and there, minutes used to knock
down other essential items on the to-do list.
saving
time, using time, sparing time, for the sake of…? what am i doing with all
this time? worrying about time. do i know that i sound crazy? yes, but this is how
most of the great philosophical debates and spiritual revelations probably
started in history. at least this is how they start for me.
they sound even crazier when God sits me down to type them, or hand write them for the sake of further time saving
when i was still using a computer that required ten minutes in its two step start
up: turn on. three minutes later: hard disk not found. press hard on turn off
button. wait two minutes. turn back on. your system shut down unexpectedly, would u
like to proceed. yes.
it was the system of deliberate un-expectation.
just like
waving the image of the man you like out of your brain to trick the Lord who
made your brain into giving you what you're not really asking for. because the
dark twisted portion of your brain believes that God is whitholding what you
want. but i digress.
in the days of the old metal square that
believed itself a computer, the typing the beginnings of my great spiritual debates
was done with two thumbs on the instantly gratifying screen of an iphone.
all that to
say that i fully enjoy the benefits of introverted conversation through the veil of technology. never through a computer screen surprisingly, but i haven’t had enough
time yet over the past six years that this specific symptom has manifested, to elucidate
that non-inclination.
back to the
main doleances and the intended topic of this post.
perhaps it
is my french-nurtured-endless-sentences-with minimal-punctuation-and-twelve-jumbled-thoughts-literrary leanings.
i do not
understand, tolerate or forgive multiple small texts sent in a chat-type fashion, in a systematic
morse-like pressing of send, like that poor soul you see in catastrophic
movies, pushing on his small beeping button, sweating his brain off, in an
attempt to save humanity, through the frantic pressing and beeping.
it must be
the stuff torture devices are made of. and it makes me almost cry of
perhaps it
is the most commonly unimportant topics usually addressed in
chatting-qui-se-veut-texting, i thought. maybe i should address the selfishness
in my heart for wanting to love people on my own terms, in my own time, and only on
topics that i deem worthy. maybe it has nothing to do with the beeping.
but really
if they.were.just.written.in.one.paragraph.
read in one
sitting.
one
continuous thought.
one nice
large blue rectangle on my screen rather that ever appearing new bubbles,
making the screen flicker, my brain startle and my heart sink ever so sligthly
and
only.one.beep.
yes, i DO have tried changing the ringtone, thank you very much for the suggestion. maybe the same musical note, if repeated so
very often, would have driven even Haendel to eradicate it from his Hallelujah
all together.
maybe if
changed to a traditional ring, the way God and Alexander Graham Bell intended
it. #fail
maybe its
an undiagnosed lack of affection for specific people communicating. tried and
tested. most are deeply cherished face-to-face. or when they send a appropriately
sized cyber-communiqué. so it's not the people, it's the bip.
i pray to
be someone who loves people, who is quick to repent and willing to serve.
but i really do.bip.not.bip.believe.bip. that the intellectual trauma and the emotional breakdown
caused by.bip.the.bip.incessant.bip.beeping. bip.of.bip.multiple.bip.small.bip.texts. is a heart issue.
en passant on the
heart issue: if life-giving communication was meant to mimic the heart beat of
life, we would have all been speaking in one.word.sentences.like.the.robots.with.the.nasal.voices.in.eighties.movies.
one of the
godly women i look up to whole-hearteldly hates group messages. and she loves Jesus. there you go. justification through the spiritual mentor. Jesus never had to deal with group
sms and the incessant exasperating bip. nothing to learn there so i'll take the next best example to follow.
(Although
we could arguably analogize that the most certain interruptions of his frequently
irritating disciples to the dreaded bip. which disciples he didn’t turn off with a
mighty smack of his hand. have i ever mentioned how thankful I am for the
faithfully recorded irksomeness of the same disciples who were loved and sent
to make similar disciples of all nations? but I digress again)
my inner
therapist truly believes this is related to The Great Fear.
Of Getting Paged, that is, about a Crashing Patient.
The Great Fear Of Getting Paged about a Crashing Patient while standing in line with other sleep-deprived people-studying-to-help-people, in the cafeteria twelve floors
below, for the first meal in 10.5 hours, trying to grab the last stale salad
before the grumpy lady at the cashier’s station decrees closing time.
The Great Fear Of Getting Paged about a Crashing Patient while on an
excruciating elevator ride with a bored- and confused about disease and death
in a fallen world- child pushing every floor button.
The Great Fear Of Getting Paged about a Crashing Patient while
returning the last six pages of the last minute and the half.
The Great Fear Of Getting Paged about a Crashing Patient while
trying to softly communicate your medical point of view on a landline, all your senses helplessly witnessing the sinister beeping and
the flashing arrows of multiplying unreturned calls grow increasingly bright and terrifying on the tiny pager screen.
The Great Fear Of Getting Paged about a Crashing Patient while
trying to phonecall a hello to your mother 3000 miles away (preaching to
yourself that an eight hour time difference makes being awake at 3:49 am
allright), pretending to call her to check on her while truthfully really just
needing to hear a friendly loving voice on your seemingly eternal terrifying
cold and eerie night.
The Great Fear Of Getting Paged about a Crashing Patient while wrapped in a plastic sterile tent, because the hospital only carries extra-large sterile
gowns, trying to focus on sticking a two millimeter wide vein in someone’s father’s neck
through your blurry eyes and scratched eyeglasses.
The Great Fear Of Getting Paged about a Crashing Patient while
running in a reception-free hallway trying to return a page from ten minutes ago
on your cell phone, while the terrifying beeping continues on the machine of
death strapped on your waist, its radiations dangerously close to your ovaries-the kind of thoughts that penetrate your exhausted brain at 3:52 in the
morning.
and to
alleviate the drama and terror of the above descriptions for non-medical personal, The Great Fear Of Getting Paged about a Crashing Patient while trying to empty your twelve-hour-full bladder while simultaneously-and
precariously- trying to hydrate for the first time in said hours.
why don’t i just silence my phone. and stop complaining, and wasting analytical power and people's time.
because The
Great Fear is above all missing a text about someone crashing. in my life that is. because
buried in the midst of all the blue bubbles and important-but delayable-topics
may be a truly emergent message. unlikely you say, but not in my conditioned brain. not in the volatile
middle east. (cf:explosive 3 lines above). not in a hospital's operating room for a last
chance to say goodbye.
