Ribbit @ MindSay

1300, 1200, 1400, 2000....entries. However many it is...do you ever feel like you've said enough? What was my 'secret' from my past blog entry? Did I have one? Who cares? (not me).

I suppose it comes to a point where real-world social contacts become paramount to spouting to online communities that can pretend to be whoever they want to be. Case in point - simply compassion and humanity....

I was fishing a month ago...I saw an elderly man coming out of the woods with some fish. I turned around, continued to fish, then looked back and minute later and didn't see him. I thought about it for a second then wondered if he had somehow slipped by me. Something made me concerned, so I stopped and walked where I saw him last, and sure enough, he was face down in the mud, having fallen over a tree. I ran to help him up, somehow terribly panged by that feeling of watching someone in such a helpless state. Thoughts ran through my mind, knowing that this old man was once like me, able to bound over fallen trees, slinking through the woods, fishing on precarious outcroppings of rock...

In short, I think I saw myself in this old man, years from now...

If I fall in 50 years, will there be anyone there to help me up?

He thanked me as he plodded along, back to his car. For a moment I wondered who he was, what he believed, who he had at home...

In real life you don't immediately start your first or second introduction to a person with "This is who I am, and this is what I believe, and all other people who believe choice B are idiots". You have introductions, chance encounters, getting to know time, becoming familiar with who that individual is as a person, coming to enjoy their company, accepting their differences from your own.

Online, we forgo with all of that. I'm sure there are many of you out there who I would like and you would like me if we had a chance encounter on the street some random day. Sometimes internet mouthpieces are too loud...

So I wonder now, what did that old man believe in? Was he a devout evangelical who thought Obama was a Muslim and not fit to lead this county? Perhaps. But he was grateful to me, and I to him, even though I don't know him.

Now I know why sometimes saying less is more.

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