It seems like a rather cliche opener but that just means that I am following in the great footsteps of individuals who have worked to create openness and compassion in the world around them. Today I officially launch something new. Over the years, I have made many friends who are technologically savvy. I am not sure whether or not this resulted as an unconscious response to my own ineptitude or an unconscious attraction to people who were moving forward and accepting the growing world of information technology while I preferred to keep my nose in a book (one with actual pages that you can turn) and focus on having conversations with people who I can reach out and touch versus interacting with an image on a screen. To put it in fewer words (which you will learn is something I rarely do but am working toward achieving), I have never done anything like this before.
Although I signed up for a Facebook account in 2008, it was mainly because all my friends at college had one and we were about to graduate. I used it sparingly and kept my privacy settings as guarded as possible. I posted pictures but was never really able to engage with people through the medium. Somehow, this form of communication felt uncomfortable to me. In general, I am a very hard person to communicate with if you are not in my physical sphere. It has always been hard for me to maintain my connections to people who I have loved and learned from and created inspiring connections with. I have lost many amazing friends because of this fault. I think this is my greatest weakness is simply reaching out and maintaining connections, even with the people who have touched me the most and I think of regularly throughout the day.
In 2013, my partner bought me my first iPad in hopes of pulling my head out of the technological sandpit I inhabited. I was still wedded to my internet-less flip phone that had held together since 2006 despite having been dropped down numerous flights of stairs. I still resisted the Phone-Internet connection largely because I wanted to be able to control my the world around me, which often meant losing contact with people I loved for long periods of time. I did sign up for Instagram but to this day I only have
I finally made the leap in 2016 to a new iPhone, complete with internet services. However, it didn’t help me maintain those distant relationships as I thought it would. It actually didn’t really change my day to day habits at first other than finally providing me with the directional intelligence that I never fully developed. Then…..
ELECTION SEASON FOR THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL RACE…..
And I suddenly found myself glued to my phone. I would check Facebook multiple times a day to read whatever news article that had been posted by one of my fiends. However, most of my Facebook friends were people who I have met in particularly Liberal, Democrat, Progressive areas (mainly Canada and the North East Coast) and their posts reflected this perspective. That is until the divide between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders climaxed and an aggressive tone began to emerge on my feed. I mostly didn’t respond but the level of negativity and anger that was displayed was something that I had never really indulged in before.
And I didn’t really indulge outside of simply reading and “liking”. Then, election season was over and our new president was Donald Trump.
Attending the Women’s March on Washington allowed me to witness and recognize that people have the ability to come together in a compassionate, peaceful, and empathetic way. The experience reminded me that what makes us human are our connections and relationships; rather than rejecting our connectivity and delving into inhumanity, it seemed like now was the time to embrace one another and find a way to back toward understanding and openness.
I started reaching out to complete strangers from all across the country and asking them to engage with me about political subject matter of all different kinds. I began collecting data, I made spreadsheets, I started writing again and researching. I found myself looking into government documents and news sources; spending hours trying to understand charts and graphs and raw data provided online directly by the government. The degree of access I have to information surprised and fascinated me. I found myself asking, “Why would anyone chose to read the news when all the information they could possibly want is right at their finger tips?” And the answer; it takes a lot of time to research and engage with people on a regular basis.
I have spent three days setting up this website and I’m sure that at this point, it is clear that I have no background in website design. But for the first time I feel like I am engaging with everything I have ever been drawn to: education, conversation, research, learning, and reading. I honestly feel like if I can learn to create a website, it doesn’t seem too far off that people can learn to communicate in a compassionate, informed, and open way. Anything is possible.
Creating A Nation United 