Connections for Castaways?

Is social networking a way for castaways to connect, much as messages in bottles used to be? Maybe more effective and focused than that?

By Bernie Gillespie

As I connect up with folks on Facebook the words of a 1979 song by the Police returned to mind. A "castaway" on a deserted island is fighting despair over "more loneliness than any man could bear." So he sends a message in a bottle. But after a year, still alone, he pangs for hope, nostalgically lamenting, "love can mend your life, but love can break your heart." So, about to give up on love and real companionship, he wakes one morning to find a "hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore, Seems I'm not alone in being alone, Hundred billion castaways, looking for a home."

One of our deepest human needs is to belong. Too often this need is exploited. But it is one of the signs we are human and created by God. While our culture is lush with individualism and selfishness, it is stingy with real intimacy and feelings of home. Some still taste it, but in smaller doses. We are made to belong, but in many ways we feel very alone -- even in a crowd ... or a church.

It might be that on FB we are sending messages in a bottle. Seems a strange way to fight loneliness for a generation that knew about friendship on a front porch. But our revolving, shifting, highly mobile, techno-savvy, culture moves at breath-taking speed and insulates us from many of those ways of connecting that worked in the past. As we find that “love can break your heart,” it is consoling to see a “hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore.” We are not so alone. So we send our message in a bottle ...

Who knows what all happened to throw us on our island. Time passes and the scene fades, almost imperceptibly, to a new backdrop. Our public stories aside, we all find ourselves a little like castaways from the rip-tide of culture change. We are blown by ill-tempered times and swept by the deep current of human events. We have landed in parts of the sea we never knew existed; and we try to understand how we got here and how we’ve changed. So we send our message in a bottle …

If life teaches you anything, it is that relationships are bigger than personal ventures. So easily we focus on the pressing tasks, hoping to arrive at some important goal, only to find the landscape shifted on us. Then, we realize it was the journey and not the goal that was our life. And the relationships made that journey meaningful. It slowly dawns with age – we are all looking for a home.

It’s not to say that we are not vitally connected in many important ways. And certainly FB serves some as little more than fun and curiosity. It may be that FB will soon be replaced by some evolved technology. But we all feel the power of the impulse to belong – as God made us. It is wise for us to savor the relationships that FB helps us renew, cultivate and nurture. As God said in the Garden: it is not good for us to be alone. So we keep sending out our s.o.s. to the world, hoping that someone gets our message in a bottle.

Posted by Bernie Gillespie on The Harbor: a Bernie Gillespie eJournal