Do you realize that it would be entirely possible, nay, likely, for me to post to this blog for the next 40 years of my life (That was an arbitrary number, nothing is planned, neither living nor posting for specifically, exactly, 40 years. It could be more, it could be less.), without any single one of my millions of readers to know anything about me.

When I say anything, while I do mean anything, what I really mean is anything substantial. In other words, you (dear reader) could theoretically read hundreds of thousands of carefully organized words typed directly by the fingers attached to my mind and soul, and then meet me in a coffee shop for a latte and say to yourself afterwards, "He really wasn't what I expected."

I don't know if that's sad or beautiful or simply troubling or, what. But it's something.

I wonder what I could do to truly express myself in words, assuming the unlikely notion that I would want each of the millions of dutiful readers of this blog to truly know me. How would I go about the task of wholly representing myself in this medium?

Perhaps I could post here a full, thoughful, descriptive and reflective diary of each moment of my days. I could relive every moment of my life through words. Of c ourse, that would mean that the recording portion of my life would take at least as much time to live, if not certainly more, than the living part of my life. Everyone knows that typing takes longer than thinking, and it's absolutely true that typing take s longer than experiencing, so it's possible that up to, say, 80% of my life would be devoted to recording in words the other 20% of my life.

Seems like a huge waste of time, especially when transferring the theoretical to the applied. I'll be damned if I'm going to reduce my life to 20% of its extraordinary potential simply to allow each of my millions of readers to get inside my head.

Maybe a record of conversations would be more appropriate. After all, upon meeting me in a Seattle coffee shop for a highly taxed latte and coming to the decision that you really didn't know me like you thought you did, your perception of me, taken at that point to be true, would actually only be based on the conversation we would have. Or at least it would be based primarily on that conversation. Certainly you would encorporate things like the way I react to the counter help, where I choose to sit, how I slurp my hot drink, etc., into the overall thing as well. But your primary sense of "knowing" me would probably be based more on what I say to you. How I say it, as well as what I choose not to say in regards to what you might have expected, based on reading my blog for 40 years, me to say. Perhaps.

Upon further review, I think that the best way for me to prepare us for this meeting in a dreary coffee shop on some rainy day in northwest America would be to take the time to write one blog.

This blog would be a detailed, reflective description of an afternoon meeting with a faithful reader in a coffee shop.

I don't have the time to do it now, but here is a skeleton frame of what I would say:

I don't drink coffee. And, further, the idea of latte makes me itchy. I've never been to Seattle or even further west than Salt Lake City, Utah, and even that was merely for business (not religion). I despise the idea of formalizing a casual encounter into such things as lunch dates or coffee dates or things like that. I also despise the idea of allowing people to know me based on words, typed or spoken, or based on actions, experienced or described, or based on thoughts, perceived or translated, which I even for myself would hesitate to define as anything more substantial than whims. While a lot of what I say, write, do or think is definitely intentional, much of it can best be described as something akin to poking my toe in the raging sea of life. Just to see what happens. So if you think that's enough to know me, to really know me, then you're sadly mistaken.

You'll never know me. You should concentrate on knowing yourself. Because, truth be told, from what I've seen, you've got a lot to learn.

(Spiral of my thoughts.)

Trip on that.


- posted by seanmh @ 11:20 AM