people in real life

we call it real life... the daily motion through time and space we take so for granted... waking, washing, dressing, eating, commuting, working, communicating, thinking, feeling, succeeding, failing, playing, resting, sleeping, and waking to repeat it all again... not everyone does all of that every day, at least not consciously, and most do much more if we use more words and refine definitions, but essentially we move through time and space and call it life, real in the real world... the distinction, i suppose, between real life and life became more pronounced and perhaps even more necessary with the advent of the internet as so many online create a persona that is not in line with who they are off line... in any case, people are not always what they (or we) appear to be in different environments, even in different offline environments... are we really the same at work as we are in bed?... or even anywhere away from work, most people tend to act differently to satisfy the expectations of the environment... so when are we in real life?... and when are we really really ourselves?...

well if we define real life, at least for the moment for the purpose in this blog (whatever that is), as the daily physical life in the immediate environment and we define the immediate environment say within twenty or thirty feet of each of us, then the people in real life are few for many of us... for me, there are a hundred or so at work and another dozen or so at stores or places i go, but if we refine real life to the personal life, the life away from financial obligations and transactions, then people in real life become those we live and play with in our daily motion through time and space and most of them may be family or roommates which, even in the best of cases, still brings some obligations so if we reduce the real life to the moments we share without any obligation at all, we come to those we choose to have in our larger personal space (that twenty to thirty foot circle) simply because we want them there... and then there is personal space which, if we can agree, is defined as space within reach, say 2-3 feet around our body, and many of us have no one in that space on any regular basis... most people choose monogamy in such desired relationships so most of us have either one or zero people in in real life when real is defined as pure desire without any obligations or strings attached... real life broken down to ones and zeros, how in the world (real or not) did we come back around to this sharing we are doing on our computers... rhetorically, no doubt...

most people in the real life of daily motion even including all physical world interactions do not even know this blog exists... it is possible no one in that concept or construct of real life actually knows i write all these words in this or any blog almost every day... that seems so strange on some levels because i may be most real right here in these words and nobody in what we commonly refer to as real life knows it... so does that mean nobody in real life knows me?... seems logical, but so sad...

i wonder if it is the same for you or others... i wonder if we just not care to really know each other or if we are too busy or if we are afraid or if we just don't know how... or maybe there is no answer... i could be wrong from the first premise and have built a seemingly logical line of thought that is no more than a house of imaginary cards that will blow away in an imaginary wind... or an electronic wind, for that matter, since in the real world what you are reading is a collection of electronic pulses, ones and zeros, here only as long as an electromagnetic storm/force doesn't come along and erase it all... but isn't that what this life is about anyway anywhere?... we live, we die, we are here, we are gone in the blink of an eye... and we do it alone in these individual bodies... that's real life... people in real life are separate and our sharing, being together is an illusion we choose to share, an illusion that can disappear in a moment for any number of reasons and will disappear in a moment sooner or later... maybe that is why so many do not take the chance, the risk, the leap of faith to create the illusion because illusion or not, the feeling of loss when someone who shared real life is gone is no less painful even knowing it was all illusion...

i didn't start out to philosophize... i just was thinking of how people in real life do not even know i exist in this blog... yet you do... so you are more real here than people in real life even if we've never met or even shared a word here or anywhere... words online expressing who we are must have some place in what we define as real life for us as knowledge, knowing each other, that is how we know we are really real... confirming it in the daily motion, in the physical sharing, that validates the knowledge, but unless the words lie, the knowledge is still as true with our without the physical evidence... all we need do is believe... as we do in real life... and if everything is shared illusion anyway, well, we are sharing real life right here and now if we want to... anyone who wants to, here it is...

or something like that :)