What Are You Doing Right Now?

A few months ago, I joined Facebook.

At first, I found it completely boring. No matter how much anyone touted the joys of Facebooking, I would rather spend time with my friends in real life over poking them or inviting them to join my ridiculous group online.

Despite my immediate negative reaction, a few months later, when the weather got blustery and cold and I didn’t want to go outside and play, I started to actually enjoy Facebook.

You see, by this time, I had garnered quite a few Facebook Friends---and yes, I actually KNOW my Facebook Friends. Well…except for maybe three or four. One of my Facebook Friends/Strangers is a famous polar explorer, author, and environmentalist. I’ve read all his books and have admired his work for years. And I do know a few people who know him personally. But me?---never met him. Would like to someday. And if he did a book signing at Barnes & Noble or some dashing speech at The Explorer’s Club in Manhattan, I would certainly jump at the chance to hear him speak. And he didn’t have a fan page. So I requested to be his friend.

The next day, he Facebook friended me back. Yay! It was kind of exciting.

“I am now online friends with a man who has travelled to the North and South Poles,” I thought to myself. “I feel like a more interesting person already.”

I was so thrilled, in fact, that I took a moment to write on his Facebook Wall---possibly the closest thing to a fan letter I’d written in my life. I steadied my hand, steeled my nerves, and strained my writerly resources to chuck up the perfect Facebook Wall Post:

“Longtime fan! Keep up the great work!”

Click.

Yeah. That’s what I wrote.

Something intelligent and witty like that. I leaned back to view my Benchley-esque prose.

Sad. Really sad.

As if a guy who’d survived on sticks of butter as he mushed a team of sled dogs over frozen Antarctic terrain needed MY encouragement to “keep up the great work”.

Despite this flicker of online embarrassment, I did find it fun re-connecting with old friends I hadn’t seen in a few years. They wrote on my wall to say hi. I wrote on theirs to say hi back. Occasionally, they would send an email to my Facebook Inbox giving a bit more personal detail on what they’d been up to.

Within days, long-lost relationships picked up right where they left off.

Well, sort of...

At least, in a virtual way.

We emailed, sent each other videos, notes, photos of kids and pets---and commented like crazy.

They commented on my pictures. I commented on theirs.

They tagged me in their 25 Random Things Note. I tagged them back in mine.

They sent me virtual gifts. I gifted them back, as well.

Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Superpoke! Poke.

Poke.

Poke.

…poke.

And then there were the Status Updates. That little window at the top of the screen that continually beckons you to answer the question:

“What are you doing right now?”

When I first joined Facebook, I didn’t quite understand the reason for this question. But, like a good student, I filled in the correct answer:

“…is writing.”

Because that’s what I was doing. Writing.

It seemed the proper answer. I had no idea that a message saying that I was writing was immediately sent to my then, six Facebook Friends---informing them (in case they were wondering) that I was, indeed, writing.

And I discovered that this piece of vital information had been blazed across cyberspace because a few hours later, someone felt the need to comment upon my post.

“Good!”

I had no idea how they had gotten the message so quickly that I was writing. In fact, I had no idea that anyone particularly cared. But apparently, the fact that I was writing caused one of my friends to feel the unstoppable need to say, “Good!”

Can’t say it gave me the sort of stamina it takes to fill up a backpack with butter and start waving at penguins. Not really. But it certainly wasn’t any lamer than “Keep up the great work!”

Status Updates suddenly became interesting. People were actually reading these things. Why were they reading them? And what were they up to that might be more interesting than what I was up to?

Some friends tweeted constantly about their every boring move. Others seemed to shift emotions more times per day than a contestant on “America’s Next Bi-Polar”. Other updates were more impersonal---amusing little tweets about things in the news or a silly thing that happened to them that day. For a few months, I found these discoveries about my friends fascinating. Watching the Live Feed was like watching a reality show starring people I knew. In the past few months, I’ve learned more about my friends than I normally would have been privy to: the birth of a new baby, the death of a beloved pet, a crippling case of insomnia, colds, the flu, the drama of auditions and getting (or not getting) the part, a new home, a desperate roommate search, new jobs, an engagement, a painful break-up, a new kitty, new band tour, new haircut, new mittens and more birthdays than you could shake a stick at.

Standing out from these messages was one terrible note. Not in a Status Update. It wasn’t that sort of note. This one came thru the private email to my Facebook Inbox: A dear friend found out last week that her beloved five year-old nephew had been diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Something called Brain Stem Glioma.

Cancer.

Yeah.

According to my friend, the prognosis for this form of cancer is particularly grim. And on a silly little blog like this, I can’t even begin to relay my feelings. As I type these words, I feel meaningless even thinking I could touch upon such a personal family tragedy and the illness of a beautiful child.

This child is important. This blog is not.

Yesterday, I went onto the hospital-sponsored website created by his mother. A place where family, friends and friends of friends like myself can convey their love and support of this little boy and his family.

I don’t know this little boy. Have never met him. But reading the notes posted on his lovingly-created site, one thing is clear:

This little boy is loved.

He is loved so much by everyone around him and has an amazing team of doctors, nurses, specialists, family members, friends and loved ones surrounding him every day.

He may only be five years old, but in five years, he has managed to find more love than most people ten times his age.

He is possibly, the luckiest boy in the world.

Last night, as I read the beautiful notes of support, love, hope and prayers posted on his website wall I realized that this child actually has friends. Real friends.

Not Facebook Friends.

Real live people he sees on a regular basis, plays with, and enjoys spending his day with. People who think about him constantly---not just when they’re scrolling the News Feed and happen to read his Status Update.

These are people who actually CARE about his Status Updates. Because he is doing more than “…is thinking about ordering a pizza.”

He’s battling cancer. A little five year-old boy is going head-to-head with one of the most evil monsters that could ever hide under a little boy’s bed.

Oddly, if it hadn’t been for Facebook, I might not have been able to keep in such close touch with my friend who has been so supportive of me and my little daily problems and concerns these past few months. If it hadn’t been for Facebook, I might never have learned this information at all. But for some odd reason, upon hearing this news, I completely lost interest in Facebook.

Not that I was so gung-ho to begin with. Sure, for about two or three weeks I was enthralled with the novelty. I was never addicted. And yes, such a thing is apparently possible.

According to several health and wellness websites, there is indeed something called “Facebook Addiction”. Like any other addiction, you keep going back to it hoping it will give you pleasure. But the more you do it, the more you need to get that same high. It begins to interfere with your job, your relationships, your health and your life in general. There is actually an online quiz you can take to tell if you are a Facebook Addict.

Last week, an aspiring New York City model and actor wrote a Status Update on his Facebook page:

“Paul Zolezzi was born in San Francisco, became a shooting star over everywhere, and ended his life in Brooklyn. …And couldn’t have asked for more.”

Three hours later, Paul Zolezzi’s body was found hanging on some monkey bars in a playground in Brooklyn.

Not long after he posted his Status Update, a friend jokingly commented on his status, “Are you dying? Or just staying in Brooklyn? I hope it’s the latter.”

LOL.

And I thought I felt like shit after I posted “Keep up the great work!”

It just seems odd to me that just before a man takes his own life, he logs onto Facebook and takes a moment to thoughtfully answer the site’s computerized question, “What are you doing right now?”

I wonder how long Paul Zolezzi sat staring at his Status Update waiting for a comment to come in before he packed up the rope and took a walk to the playground.

While most children are pretty computer-savvy nowadays, I kind of doubt my friend’s five year-old nephew has a Facebook page. And, even if he did, I would imagine he would find it much more entertaining to go outside and play hide-and-seek with his friends than to follow their activities on Facebook.

According to an article in this month’s Utne Reader titled The Lonely American, one in four American households consists of one person only. More people are living alone in this country than ever before.

The article goes on to talk about the “busyness” of Americans. As Americans, we are encouraged to believe that we can be anything we want to be if we just keep trying. The Utne Reader explains:

“A good friend described the impact of busyness on our neighborhoods brilliantly: ‘Being neighborly used to mean visiting people. Now being nice to your neighbors means not bothering them.’ People’s lives are shaped by how busy they are. Lives also are shaped by the respect and deference that is given to busyness—especially when it is valued above connection and community. If people are considerate, they assume that their neighbors are very busy and so try not to intrude on them. Dropping by is no longer neighborly. It is simply rude.”

I found this particularly interesting because as a child, I was raised to not be “a bother”.

My mother used to HATE when people dropped by---but for a practical reason. She was a single working Mom. She worked nights and slept during the day. Stopping by to ring her doorbell for a friendly lunchtime chat was the equivalent of her ringing their doorbell to see if they wanted to buy Girl Scout cookies at five o’clock in the morning.

I was taught that not bothering people was as important as honesty, integrity, and hard work.

When email first came out, I was thrilled; because I could now communicate with my friends without actually bothering them. No longer would I interrupt someone’s dinner or pry them away from an important televised ball game. I could go onto my computer at any time of the day or night, quickly state why I was contacting them and then let them read and reply at their leisure. Never again would I feel as if the sound of my voice were a nuisance.

You would think that would have taken care of the problem. But it did not.

Because, tho I tried to keep my emails to the absolute minimum in content and frequency---I would often receive a reply to my email over a week later, “SO so sorry I’m just now getting around to this. Things have been SO hectic around here. I’ve just been so busy this past month and it doesn’t seem to be dying down anytime soon. But YES!!!---To answer your question---I WAS a camp counselor! ---and we used to use Calamine Lotion for bee stings. And yes, if you’re allergic, you’ll know pretty quickly. Sorry about your nasty bee sting! Hope all is well!”

A year ago this week, I had the most horrible experience of my life---I was running for the subway to work, fell, and broke my jaw.

It was a horrible experience. The doctors at the hospital told me that the jaw is the worst bone you can break. I had to have surgery for the first time in my life. They had to cut into my face and insert a steel plate into my head. And if it seems like I’m telling this in a scary campfire story way---trust me, it was that scary. I was warned before the surgery that one of the potential hazards of this new surgery was that a crucial facial nerve could potentially be cut---partially paralyzing my face for life.

“I have to let you know that it’s a possibility,” the doctor solemnly warned.

After I fell, I walked to the emergency room. Alone. I sat in the waiting room alone. I hesitated calling anyone until I had gone thru most of the preliminary tests and been given the diagnosis. I didn’t even call my family until five minutes before I signed the admittance papers. I didn’t want to bother them.

The call started with my calmly saying, “Hi. I hope I didn’t wake you up and sorry to bother you. But I had a little accident…”

I went thru the surgery alone. Of course, my mother was ready to hop on a plane to be with her little girl. But I begged her to stay home. I didn’t want to bother her.

“By the time you get here, I’ll be done with my surgery and back at home. Really. I’ll be fine.”

Two days later, I got a cab to pick me up outside the hospital doors and had it drop me off at the drug store about ten blocks away to pick up my prescriptions. I waited by myself for about half an hour while they filled them and then walked the last ten blocks home to my studio apartment in the cold.

I spent the next two weeks recuperating at home. Alone. I had no visitors. Lots of people called. And that was perfectly fine with me. I was more than happy to give them any updates they needed over the phone when they called. But I live all the way uptown in Washington Heights. It’s such a long ride on the subway. Really, I don’t need anything. I’m fine.

I also looked horrible as my face swelled up to twice its normal size. I spent two weeks hobbling on a bad knee back and forth to the hospital for follow-ups and then lying on my bed watching television while zonked out on Percocet.

At the time, I didn’t feel lonely or even alone. Maybe it was all the calls and emails I received. Maybe it was the Percocet. But I felt self-sufficient. And I wasn’t bothering anyone. I was proud of myself for handling this with strength, courage and perseverance.

The article in The Utne Reader goes on to say that Americans are encouraged to be self-reliant. A little something we can blame on Thoreau and Walden Pond. That pick-yourself-up-by-your-boot-straps mentality that shows you are, indeed, a winner. America’s history is full of the stories of immigrants who left their families overseas and went on a frightening journey to a new land with fifty dollars and a dream in their pocket.

On the wall in my living room is a framed copy of a ship’s ledger. The ship was The Kaiser Wilhelm and it arrived at Ellis Island in New York City on December 20^th, 1905. The page from the ledger lists the immigrants’ names and the answers to the questions they were asked upon arrival.

One of the names on the list is Helena Kustra---my great-grandmother.

According to the ledger, she was nineteen years-old, female, single, able to read and write, of Polish nationality and race, from the town of Blazowa, free of any mental or physical illness, not a polygamist, not an anarchist, not crippled or deformed, and not in any way recruited to come to the United States by organized labor. They also asked how much money she had in her pocket.

Helena Kustra came here with five dollars.

What most of these Great American Stories fail to mention is that, while she may only have had five dollars in her pocket---she came here with loads of family and friends.

Numerous people from her small town in Poland are listed next to her name---the entire group of them obviously standing in line together, muttering their fears, hopes and concerns in Polish next to the Bohemian woman with eighteen dollars and conjunctivitis in the left eye.

At Ellis Island, they were asked their final destination city. Her entire group listed “St. Louis”. The name of the street and the relationship to the people in St. Louis is written in tiny, scrawled print and indecipherable---but one thing is clear. They did not go thru their journey alone.

Living in New York City, I meet immigrants everyday. Not just the casual friendships made with the guys at the corner bodega, but great people I actually know, hang out with, have real conversations with and consider my friends. Most of them find it odd that I don’t have any family here in NYC. On holidays, they’ve even invited me to their homes to spend the day with their families.

“Oh, that’s so sweet. Thank you. But that’s okay. I’m fine. Really. I have so much to do. I could really just use the day off.”

That’s certainly true. I am a busy, New York gal. And I don’t want to be a bother.

They smile and nod their heads as if they understand us crazy, busy Americans. So why do I get the feeling that these same immigrants, living in two-bedroom apartments with six other people, feel sorry for me?

Most of these immigrant friends have computers.

None of them are on Facebook.

Two weeks after my accident, I went back to work. I was in pain, with visible stitches, and a hugely swollen (but temporarily) partially paralyzed face. No facial nerves were cut---but a salivary gland was “nicked” and it caused the left side of my face to swell up three times its size. It was like the worst toothache imaginable---on about seventeen teeth. Not even the Percocet helped. I avoided friends. Didn't want anyone to see me like that.

Over a month after this horrible accident, someone gave me a hug.

It took a few moments to dawn on me that no one had hugged me since I fell. It was a hug from an immigrant friend. A friend who felt bad that I was still in such pain and who was trying to cheer me up. This friend thought nothing of this hug. He hugged his friends and family members on a regular basis. Self-reliance was not a part of his culture. I, on the other hand, realized that outside of doctors and nurses, no one had physically touched me in over a month. The effect was staggering.

It wasn’t as tho I didn’t have close friends or family---they just weren’t physically near me.

According to the news reports, Paul Zolezzi had moved back to NYC from his hometown of San Francisco a mere ten days before his suicide. Back in San Francisco, he had recently been arrested for buying heroin on the streets. His mother, who hadn’t seen him in quite some time, said she knew of his troubles and addiction and simply replied, “I was praying for him.”

According to the news, at the time of his death, he was sleeping on the couch of a friend named Melissa Lopez, 33, in Brooklyn.

I know a Melissa Lopez about 33 in Brooklyn. My Melissa Lopez is the sort of good-hearted soul who would take a stray, wandering friend into her home and let him sleep on her couch. She would sit up nights talking to him. Share her feelings, experiences and insights. Sure, she might bring Jesus into the picture a bit too much for some folks. But it would all be done for the right reasons. And she could turn off the Jesus whenever she felt it was too much. She would hug. Cuddle. Nurture. And do whatever she could to help a tortured, heroin-addicted soul come back to life.

I don’t know if this Melissa Lopez is MY Melissa Lopez. I haven’t seen Melissa in almost a year and don’t have her number. But some 33 year-old Melissa Lopez in Brooklyn thought enough of Paul Zolezzi to take him into her over-priced and tiny Brooklyn apartment and let him sleep on her couch. He could have talked to her. Shared what he was going thru with her.

Instead, he went on Facebook.

I don’t get the phenomenon of Facebook. Perhaps my tendency to not be a bother even extends to Facebook. I’ve often found myself thinking about commenting on someone’s Status Update or their photo and have resisted the temptation.

“I just commented on that thing they posted a few days ago. If I post twice in one week, they might think I’m too needy.”

Last night, as I read the hospital bulletin board about my friend’s five year-old nephew, I saw unabashed emotion. For this beautiful child, there was no holding back. There was no thought of appearing “needy”. No worry of “bothering” the family with their posts. There were messages from teachers saying how all the other children were looking forward to seeing him back at school. People who couldn’t wait to come visit him, offers to babysit the other children while they dealt with treatments, offers of any kind of help the family could possibly need.

This was not just an online community---this was a village and this was THEIR child.

The sort of village Paul Zolezzi certainly had not found on Facebook.

The Lonely American looks at these social connections (and disconnections) and then pulls the last string on the fragile sweater of our lives as it topples the front we put up when we cry out, “But I LIKE being alone!”

This is the seemingly unbreakable defense uttered by millions.

We LIKE having our own place. We LIKE being able to come home and watch whatever we want to watch on TV. We LIKE not having anyone nag us about washing the dishes or picking up after ourselves. And especially---we LIKE the quiet, the space and the peace after a long, hard day at work.

I’m a writer. I certainly enjoy my solitude. Do I need it to write? No.

Yet, I’ve often found myself throwing these lines of defense back in the faces of people who question my choice---yes, my CHOICE to live alone.

And as Americans we get our feathers in an uproar when it comes to matters of choice.

But is it really a choice? Or are we just ingrained to think of it as such?

Our culture teaches us to prize being self-reliant---much in the same way the early 20^th Century Japanese culture prized obedience.

The most extreme Japanese followers became Kamikazes.

Our most extreme followers hang themselves on monkey bars.

In both cases, alone.

The Lonely American shoots down every reason we offer for our self-imposed disconnections till we’re left with nothing to do but admit that we, indeed, are alone. And lonely.

And who wants to admit to being lonely? Most people would rather admit to a crack addiction than admit to being lonely.

Lonely people have no friends. Lonely people are mentally deformed in some way. They’d have to be---because if they weren’t so mentally screwed up, they wouldn’t be alone.

Today was the last day my friend’s nephew had to spend with his family before he started his treatments. Today he was not alone. And tomorrow, as he begins his journey, he will not be alone, either.

Most of the rest of us will.

Will we play on the monkey bars with our friends and family or will we virtually hang ourselves from them alone?

“Loneliness was never the goal,” The Lonely American says. “It’s just the spot where too many people wind up. We get stuck because the world we have wandered away from is so frantic and demanding. We get stuck because we have dreamed about lonesome heroes who stand defiantly apart. We get stuck because we feel left out and stop looking for ways back in. We should remember that the outside was not meant to be our final destination.”

Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of my accident. Tomorrow I’m calling a friend and playing on the monkey bars.

I just hope I don’t fall!

What are YOU doing right now?