Reflections on the Thin Blue Wire

Now and then life presents a learning opportunity.
Sometimes it is subtle.

When that occurs, I often seek someone out to debrief myself.

My purpose in doing this is that, in reconstructing the events, I see more detail, and sharpen my own skills for spotting cues I may have missed.

The other reason I do it is that these things often leave feeling a little vulnerable, and I am seeking out a connection.

This isn't about debriefing something, it is about that connection.

Connection is an interesting thing. We humans depend on it. We are driven to seek out emotional connection with others. Those drives are primal.

It does not truly happen unless we are open and vulnerable to rejection. The vulnerability is offered up, anxiety builds, and when that vulnerability is embraced and accepted, there is a flush of relief and peace. This happens over and over, as the people go deeper.

At the point where one person or the other stops offering up vulnerability, the relationship freezes in place. It may be OK, but it gets no deeper. If one or the other seeks a deeper connection she or he will offer up vulnerability. If it is rebuffed, then that anxiety builds but is not released. Yet this anxiety seeks release. This is the point when people begin contemplating seeking that release elsewhere. They may establish many shallow connections, or pseudo connections to try to fill the void, to gain that flush that comes from the embrace of acceptance.

We evolved when connections were established face to face. We can see, hear, touch, sense the other person in all of the nuances of communication that operate well below our awareness.

Now fast forward to the present day. We were never equipped to establish and maintain those connections over a thin blue wire. Yet, I feel something. I translate that feeling into a stream of language, and my fingers follow, completing and breaking electrical circuits. Those impulses are encoded, and sent over that little blue wire, and the words I am thinking to express what I am feeling appear on a screen to be taken in by the eyes of another human being.

At the other end, those words are taken in, interpreted and invoke feeling in that other person. It is an incredible process.

As sterile as this is, emotions are created and exchanged over these little strands of copper. Such is not so much the power of the network, as the power of the human capacity for connection.

Or is it?

When I feel a connection in this way, what is real, and what am I filling in? What is actually coming over the blue wire, and what actually is created within me, from my own experiences and imagination? 

Connections that feel or seem amazingly deep can be established this way. Why?
My theory here is that the distance, the abstraction, makes it far easier to offer up vulnerability because the rejection doesn't hurt as much. Deeper vulnerability is offered because there is less downside. When it is accepted, though, the relief of embrace is just as strong. Simply put, there is a higher return on the emotional risk.

Add to that the natural human response to fill in details from fantasy, and a rich world is constructed in which great depths of vulnerability are offered up, exchanged, and accepted. Each person is building that fantasy, and because the bandwidth is so narrow, no evidence is ever presented to refute it.

Think about how rich relationships are built in a purely virtual fantasy online world where there is no pretense of anything being real.Yet the feelings are still there - intimate connection between fictional characters that are nothing like the people who created them. It is no wonder people get sucked into these worlds - the "hit" on primal parts of the brain is stronger than heroin.

Now what happens when a person who has reached the depth limit in a personal relationship wants more?
Where is the easiest place to get it?
That thin blue wire beckons.

I can't say for sure, but I think recently I was at the other end of that blue wire.
Time for Sam to look in the mirror.