Not Missing the Moment: Online Response

In a global world of instant communication, it is so easy to respond. 

Our ancestors might have had to wait for weeks and weeks before a response to their written communication was delivered by a postman on foot or on a horse.  Later post came by sea and only thirty years ago one still eagerly awaited what was known as airmail.

Today it is no longer a question of how we will transport our message but of what our message will be.

Ambo’s thread on the reasons we do not respond to various blogs and how we feel when others do not respond to ours, has inspired this reflection on online responding and what that entails.

Yesterday I watched a video of John Daido Loori Roshi entitled “Not Missing the Moment”.  In it he discusses a Zen approach to photography. He speaks of going into nature and being in the presence of the subject being photographed.  He suggests bowing to the subject – an acknowledgement of presence, asking for permission to take the photograph, resonating with the subject and waiting until the right moment to take the photo arrives.

Everything is in a state of change, light and shadow are constantly moving, and gradually one learns to sense the moment when the camera will take the picture.  If a mistake is made, one simply waits and tries again.

This might all relate to photography but it also serves as a wonderful instruction in responding.

When we read another’s blog and are deciding whether to respond, it is so easy to forget in this virtual setting that we are in the presence of the blog’s author.  The avatars are a reminder of this whether they be actual photographs of the individual or a symbolic representation. 

You might find it strange to bow to this avatar and prefer a short moment of acknowledging that there is someone on the receiving end of what you might decide to write.  At any rate, it certainly gives one a new appreciation of the practice of bowing to icons and statues of the other not present and  is a possible opportunity to transcend a ritual act and appreciate the aesthetics and deeper meaning of the act being performed.   

("Please come in" from "Everyday Bardos")

The fact that the blog has been written is an invitation from the author to respond.  If we accept this invite, it is probably a good idea to read the blog again before we respond.  Carefully reading what the other has written is the equivalent of good listening in face-to-face communication.

We do not resonate with everyone on a particular site and this is okay.  We do not resonate with all we read and this is also okay.  I sometimes wonder, however, if I am not too hasty in my judgements of what I imagine the other and what they are attempting to communicate to be.  I don’t always read their profile or some of their other posts to better understand their culture, their strengths or the acknowledgment of difficulties in communication.

Someone with Asperger’s Syndrome, for example, tends to fixate on a subject and go into it in great detail.  This could mean a very long post which despite its brilliance, others find too long or tiresome to read.  Do I occasionally make the effort to at least read one of these posts and respond in a meaningful fashion?  This could be the moment I am being asked not to miss.

We will make mistakes but then we can try again.

As the one writing or responding, taking responsibility for our message will involve asking, “To blog or not to blog?, “To tweet or not to tweet?”,  “To respond or not to respond?”

Simply pausing mindfully before writing and asking such questions, assists one in knowing when the moment has arrived and not missing it.  It is in these moments that what is to be written writes itself and the message being delivered has greater depth.