Living in a Virtual Word

Yes, we are living in a virtual world, living in a virtual world. How many of you now have the chorus of Madonna’s 1983 song Material Girl stuck in your head from that sentence?

How many of you now have the chorus of Madonna’s song stuck in your head?

“Living in a material world
And I am a material girl
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl…”

And how many of you now have George Harrison’s 1973 Living in the Material World lyrics in your head?

“I’m living in the material world
Living in the material world
can’t say what I’m doing here
But I hope to see much clearer,
after living in the material world
I got born into the material world
Getting worn out in the material world…”

My point is that we are so virtually connected that we can even get annoying songs stuck in each other’s head without even speaking a world. We are impacting each other. We are influencing, enraging, comforting, inciting, annoying, loving and touching each other virtually.

We even do business virtually. I have never ever met my virtual assistant in person. Isn’t that crazy? Many of my clients and students at Selah Press I will never see face-to-face. I find that amazing. Once upon a time when I moved away from friends I risked losing contact with them if we didn’t send each other snail mail hand written letters. Now we can celebrate, comfort, and connect virtually. We can share pictures of our cats, dogs and even chickens. We can know each other more deeply in some ways and in others are totally disconnected.

There is a dance mom from the studio that my girls dance at and I have grown to significantly admire her due to our connection on Facebook. Our girls are separated in age by several years so we are rarely see each other in person. For one reason or another we connected on Facebook—maybe we saw something one of our shared friends said on each other’s Facebook page—I really don’t remember. But she writes the most poignant and sometimes hilarious updates on Facebook. She also writes a blog. Through what she has written I have found a great respect for her. I think she is hilarious. I haven’t run into her in forever, but when we cross paths ago I have the incredible urge to hug her neck like a good Southerner woman. Seriously—her writing is that good—that I feel connected as she writes her blog Two Kids a Dog and Along Came Grandma.

Did you notice my list earlier? The things we are doing virtually…influencing, enraging, comforting, inciting, annoying, loving and touching each other virtually. Notice how some of those things are negative and some are positive?

Be the positive. Because we are living in a virtual world…The real world is ugly for a whole lot of people. Be the beauty. Be the person that makes someone smile all the way down to their toes and up to the tippy top of their head.