Web of Life

Dearest Readers,

It means so much to me that this blog is being read and that it is inspiring people. The more I embrace the world of social media the more I feel that Great Connection between us all.

It's amazing what the Internet has done to change our relationship to one another. As disconnected, disparate and distanced human beings all alone on our little islands we are now sharing instantly our common bond via the Web.

Each morning, before I post, I check out the blogs that are on my Reader's List. Each morning I check Leanne Coppen's blog Living with Breast Cancer. In yesterday's Inspiring Works post I told you that Leanne died. But today I still went to check her blog. I couldn't not. It's a ritual I'm not ready to let go of just yet.

What I found there amazes me. Comment after comment from Leanne's readers expressing sympathy, condolences, grief, joy, rage, gratitude and love. How many of us were brought together in this virtual community of compassion? Has there ever been anything in history that has connected people so immediately and with such depth as the World Wide Web?

Back in the late '90s there was a great pop song and music video by Jamiroquai called Virtual Insanity. It's a very catchy tune and really fun to dance to. The video was super innovative at the time. The lyrics are all about the total craziness that technology generates and how much of what we've invented is "not Nature's Way."

But for all the insanity that new technology breeds it also creates this unbelievable unity among us. We are truly a global community today because of blogs, Facebook, Twitter and the like. We may be taking it too far sometimes (I just read a great piece in The New Yorker about a guy who walks down the aisle, kisses his bride and later goes down on her in the honeymoon suite Tweeting all the while) we are also benefiting from its broad reach.

A couple of readers sent me messages yesterday thanking me for this blog, for sharing my life, letting me know my words "echo far and wide". This means more to me than I can say. Not because I'm being read by lots of people, though that does make me happy, but because I am a part of this marvelous web of strangers coming together as friends.

Inspiring Message of the Day: Despite the grief we feel, the losses we must bear, the seeming unfairness of certain circumstances, there is a Great Connection of which we are all a part. I can feel that Connection both here, in this virtual world, and here, in the centre of my heart.