"the unbearable idea of other minds"

i got into an argument today with B over whether it was lame of me or not to blog and/or read blogs. which really got me thinking....why do i blog/ love reading others' blogs??

B argued that it was stupid of me to a) write about my life and expect people to care [to clarify i do not expect anyone to care--i write my blogposts as a primarily therapeutic function--if you do so happen to care or find my life and musings interesting, then that's an added delight!] and b) to read other people's blogs. our argument continued as follows

B: "the blogosphere [my word, not hers--i substituted it it in for clarity] is just a network of lame people writing about every stupid aspect of their life--no one cares!"

M: "then what the hell is facebook?"

B: "stupid too!"

M: "ok so you spend time on facebook i spend time blogging--what's the difference?"

B: "facebook isn't paragraphs of people's stupid stories about their lives. i don't go reading too much about some random person's life"

M: "what the hell is a status update? and what do you mean--you stalk wall-to-walls dont you?"

B: "okay i'm done i'm not gonna argue about blogging"

...and that's how it ended.

the argument was cut short by B's endearing irritability,

but my thoughts were not.

i beg to differ, B. i find blogs fascinating. i revel in the incredibility [incredible-ness?] that is the individual. i am perpetually astounded by the fact that no one person knows anything about any other person--how they think, exactly everything they've been through, experienced, said, heard, done. it's AMAZING.

one of my favorite quotes from mcewan's "atonement" says it in a way i wish i could:

"Was everyone else really as alive as she was?… Was being Cecilia just as vivid an affair as being Briony? Did her sister also have a real self concealed behind a breaking wave, and did she spend time thinking about it, with a finger held up to her face? Did everybody, including her father, Betty, Hardman? If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone’s thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone’s claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. One could drown in irrelevance."

i drown in irrelevance daily. but i don't see it as a bad thing. i am irrelevant--in the big scheme of things. but instead of being destroyed by the prospect of other minds--of just as vivid affairs as meredith-- i take the opportunity to engage in the other minds, appreciate them, marvel at them--that's why i read blogs. and that is why i blog, in the hopes that my mind might prove as equally fascinating to others, as theirs do to me.