How Technology Affects Our Lives

Years have past since dissolving was imposed upon me. I represent a voice, lines typed in a little white square, words whispered on the phone or black jumpy symbols against a bright background. These are my synthetic feelings. I am there and yet I am not.

It is not about being practical. It is not a question of saving time either. Sometimes, long online conversations can equal the time needed to go to a favorite bar, meet in person with the ones you most wish to and talk over a couple of cups of coffee or spirits.
Somewhere along the line between what I wanted and could do, I lost myself. It made me shrink in a matter of days and I just became too small to face the big world, or such was my impression. Visually I experienced myself as an ant living in the world of giant ants. We were all of the same species but the size did matter.
Sitting next to other people was a torture. Somehow they all needed to bend over in order to see the little me and hear me speak. I, on the other hand, suffered from back pain, having to look up all the time.

Horrified by the thought that I am the smallest in this strange world, which I once knew and in which I belonged, I decided to hide in a newly designed world of my own. I made one up to match my size. It was mine, and I was the only one in it. My only connection with the world outside my own was through the use of the handy T (technology-cal) inventions Phones, television, computers, were all that was necessary. I kept myself updated and safely isolated in my shell. It took a lot of effort to convince myself that I did not need anyone else. Self - sufficiency was a term with which I fell in love.

As every other illusion, this came to an end one day. Devastated I crashed onto the arm chair with my mind floating. In front of me, images alternated on the big flat TV screen. I caught sequences of an old but well known movie: Sam the ghost was talking to his loved one, melting her down to tears. He found his way through to her even when death came in between them. And what was I doing? Playing dead in a desperate attempt to avoid getting hurt again?! Could anything possibly hurt more than this? Once you open up to the good, some of the bad will sneak in too. But is this more horrible than to improvise a sterile and tasteless life?
Five years I tip - toed in my hidden theatre before something hit me as a storm: I realized that being small in a big world is better than being a giant in an empty one. There was an uncontrollable need to reach out to people, to start breathing the air that others do, to go out and feel the sun on my shrunk skin. I felt the urge to smile at someone regardless of whether they would smile back at me.
I opened up the big T umbrella although it was not raining. Camouflaged like a floating mushroom, I went up and down the streets initially in fear. I wanted for the others to see me, catch their reactions at the same time scared, scared of me, scared of them.
Suddenly I got rid of the umbrella. It started raining. Washed on the soft warm rain drops I decided to ring a door bell of an old friend’s.

I am no longer a T freak. I can feel again.