We live "Here"

One of my "over the Internet, no, we have never met" mentors is Holly Lisle.  In her weekly email she wrote these words:
"We humans do not live in the world.  We live in whatever three square feet of space we're occupying at the moment, and in order to care about the things going on in the larger world, first the world has to reach into our three square feet of space and touch us."  … Holly Lisle, from Holly's Tip 9/14/2012

Of course, I cannot imagine exactly what she meant, so I do what we all do:  I am sharing what I think she means, or rather, what I her input to mean for me.

For most of us, our world may be too big.  By tweeting, texting, friending on Facebook, looking only at the big picture, reading of large, national disasters and so forth we actually insulate ourselves from life.  Nothing REAL actually touches us.

I have a person sort of in my life who is so busy building an electronic following that she fails miserably at her here and now relationships. She blocks uncomfortable, fragile, less-than-perfect people out of her consciousness in favor of artificial bytes of fake friends. 

Many of us do the same.  We fail to let the reality of our older neighbor who slows us down touch us.  We forget that babies have messy diapers and a temper to go along with them.  We ignore the neighbors who don't do things the way we like them done, and who fail to do their yard work according to our schedules.  These folks don't really exist for us.  Super-Barbie and Keen Ken in our imaginations take up all our time, and no matter how miserable we are we yearn for the company of the fakes we think of as the beautiful people. 

I think I may be a bit harsh when I write that, and think the above.  I think reality is messy, harsh at times, and full of undiscovered potential to help us get free of the wire ties that keep us in the plastic packaging of the toy store and start living in our "three square feet of space" and allow ourselves to be touched, even when the touch disturbs and even hurts us.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.