Poetry: Sometimes I Struggle

There have been times in my life when I have struggled. I have struggled with the world around, with the inanimate and the animate, I have wrestled with stones, I have opposed the will of water, I have contested with God and Men. Some of those struggles I won. Some of them I lost. Some of them I struggled until the sweet darkness of exhaustion laid me low, to wake, to struggle again, to sleep, to wake, to struggle until it was all I knew. Then I would sleep, having no knowledge of winning or losing, deep and dreamless sleep from which I awoke, uncertain if I was awake or dreaming. I have found scars on my body and my soul and never known where they came from, what their cause was, what they signified. Some of them are small and hidden and healed, scarcely visible in the half-light of memory. Others are deep and ugly and lend their form to the shape of me. Then there are times when I have not struggled, when I flowed through the rivers of life as smoothly as a glistening otter, or a trout, submerged in dark shadows and scarcely visible to the eyes of those of us who are earth bound. There are times when I have blossomed like an oak, green and brown and expansive and ancient, my boughs reaching widely to embrace all of the earth and the creatues of the earth. Those days have formed me as well, painted my face with smiles and tears and soft visaged awe. I am all of these things and I am none of them. Sometimes I struggle and sometimes I do not.

Sharing: A Brilliant Little Piece of Prose

Sharing: I read this today was just terribly impressed. This is a brilliant little piece of prose from Forbes.com.

"Language, humanity's primary enabling technology, evolves out of the crucible of collective agreement. The words that society chooses to use as signifiers of new concepts are not capricious. They have the power to reveal. There is a reason that the word "social" is being applied as a prefix everywhere--from social media, social computing and the social Web to social capital and the social enterprise. This planetary skin of networked communication that links us together is also reshaping the way business is conducted. Why are we seeing the rise of all things "social"? Why are people so taken with poking one another, summarizing their experiences in 140 characters or becoming fans of Coca Cola ( KO - news - people )? (Don't laugh--Coca Cola has 3.5 million fans on Facebook). The answer follows the old punch line to a crude joke--"Because it can." Why is our society massively adopting social technologies? Because we can. Human beings are innately social. We are designed to share and connect with others. Period. What's more, we are born into cultures that provide a blueprint for how to communicate and organize. We know how to join a conversation at a party, meet new people and make decisions and organize in a social setting (with varying degrees of competence). Because we can, our innate desire and capacity to socialize is migrating to a platform (the Internet) that has breathtaking scale. The observation that these activities are meaningless, time-wasting or trivial misses the point entirely. Much of our day is dedicated to these activities already (tipping your hat to the neighbor, sharing a small experience with a coworker, sharing pictures of your kids with the receptionist). If you are wondering why people spend their time poking their friends on Facebook--stop. You are just seeing previously confined social activity being exposed to a larger audience." (Forbes.com 04/14/09)