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| Image from http://aweekly.blogspot.com/2013/02/facebook-more.html |
In the past couple of months, quite a few
of my friends have given up Facebook. The amount of dismay it caused their
Facebook friends is a pretty good reflection of how much this social media site
has come to mean to us modern-day Filipinos. Their giving up Facebook has given
me cause to reflect on just how much Facebook has impacted my life…. And the
answer is: A LOT.
Let’s take an ordinary lunch break as an
example. During our brief work lunches together, my dad commented on how my
brother and I spent most of the ten-minute lunch break on our smart phones,
checking Facebook and Twitter, and hastily gobbling down our humble meal in as
little as two or three minutes. “I see the same thing in restaurants!” said he.
And it’s true. You see families gathered around a table, but most (if not all)
have their heads bowed, fiddling with their gadgets instead of conversing.
I admire people who can take Facebook
breaks, and I admire those who can quit it, cold turkey, all the more. I don’t
think I can!
I suppose it depends on how you use it.
Facebook can be a HUGE time suck if you let your guard down. But if you spend
only a couple of minutes a day, I think it can do a world of good!
I mainly use Facebook for work, believe
it or not. J Part of being a teacher is
knowing one’s students, and knowing how to bring information to them. In our
school, we don’t forbid our teachers the use of Facebook precisely because we
know how useful it is! We have groups for our classes, our clubs, and of
course, we teachers also use Facebook to communicate with the parents of our
students (especially OFW’s, whose sole means of seeing their children grow is
through the pictures of class activities posted online by our Principal and
their child’s teacher).
Another reason I use it is to help me
keep track of what’s happening in the lives of friends. As one grows older,
one’s friends tend to scatter all over the world. I marvel at how the internet
can make us feel as if we’re only a few meters apart, instead of thousands of
kilometers. And I’ve met some of my closest friends through the Internet, so
I’m forever a fan.
I really wonder how they did things back
in the good ol’ days without technology. Life was much simpler and went at a
slower pace, but the same essential, existential problems faced us, even then. Questions
like “What is the good life? What does it mean to be human? What is the purpose
for which I was born?” will be perpetually asked for as long as the human race
exists. And perpetually, we will continuously FEEL the huge divide between the
world of ideas, of the soul… and the world of the flesh, of harsh physical
reality. It’s part of what makes us human. Poets like Longfellow chafed at the
tensions of life brought about by the daily human struggle.
“The scholar and
the world! The endless strife,
The discord in
the harmonies of life!
The love of
learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the
sweet serenity of books;
The
market-place, the eager love of gain,
Whose aim is
vanity, and whose end is pain!”
My profession is an old-fashioned one,
and it’s a perfect fit! Old-fashioned people are drawn to teaching because
education is the last bastion against lawlessness and looseness of morals,
against worldliness and secularism. I guess that’s why I’m drawn to
old-fashioned things like brewed tea in pretty tea cups, physically hand-held books over
e-books, pianos over electronic keyboards, snail-mail letters over hastily-typed
PM’s, glasses over lenses.
But for communication, nothing beats the
usefulness of Facebook. The challenge, I suppose, is to limit the use modern
technology and not let it rule us. The tyranny of technology only occurs
when we let it.
On a side note: It’s the Manila
International Book Fair next week! Sept. 11-15, 2013, at the SMX Convention
Center in SM Mall of Asia! See y’all there!
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