In this last week of March, I am celebrating and announcing how this, too, is the last week of Q1, the first quarter, of 2024. I state what is obvious to me because I am observing how it is forgotten or unseen, unrecognizable to other people’s inner states in this era of information overload.
A few months ago, I noted on a Friday to a medium-sized group of 30 people how “it is still Friday” as I began to rattle off a short list of logistics and information that was salient to their lives and our shared experience. What I had not anticipated was how my preluding (sic) comment would elicit laughter—what I perceived as a bit of delight, maybe a few of them feeling surprised.
I remember this as I choose to make 10 cold calls, not wholly cold but what I ought to more accurately describe as tepid calls, to people with whom my relationship has been dormant for more than a year. I’m curious to extend to them, as I have both: the desire (curiosity mixed with longing) to reconnect and resources (emotionally, and minutes in the day) to do so.
I experiment to observe how they will react, if at all, to the stimulus thereby testing some hypotheses that I harbor about an equation of select people, my actions, the significance of the bond of our shared history, and what may arise by seeking them out before the first day of Q2. I also do this as a tiny, potential gift to myself so I may be surprised by how they reciprocate, whether they communicate anything back to me. Because there’s no obligation for them to do so, due to the vast spatial chasm between their life and mine. Since this is a group of people I won’t bump into at the grocery store or see at the library or a community gathering.
While I cherish the chance to call or email, I recoil at the auto-reply email messages that I increasingly receive. I do not like the out-of-office (sometimes abbreviated as “OOO”) because I don’t get it. I don’t comprehend it, and I do not understand it as fewer of us work in offices, so why aren’t we writing OOH or OOE messages, for out-of-home or out-of-email, respectively. Wouldn’t that be a more accurate description of how we are living and acting and not emailing? But more than that misnomer, I feel bewildered by the auto-replies because I do not assume that people will email me simply because I email them. It may not be the reflexive, OOO emails that chafe, but the dominant cultural assumptions about the purpose and people of email messages—who and what they are for.
For me, email is most often a way of asking a question. Questions are how I inquire with my surroundings. After questions, I rely on email to (i) disseminate information or (ii) express feelings and other unknowns or (iii) to invite people to an event or into some realm of my life.
Email is not a tool that compels or obligates them to prove or provide me with something. I view an email inbox is a minor portal in their landscape, one that can reveal a new valley, vista or other setting; a portal that may surprise or reveal how what had been impossible may now be very possible only if they or we pass through the portal (or maybe it is a doorframe or window) that our relationship makes possible because of what my email extends to them and what they meet the message with.
On the other hand, I bristle at the not-seeing of others, of overstating the functions of the tool that is email. Email is not a time card to demonstrate that someone is currently working and working diligently for their wage or salary. Email is not a guarantee that someone (or the multitudes of people on a listserv) will respond to each message that I send. Email is me sharing my light, casting my line and using my voice unbeknownst to me whether anyone will see my radiance, nibble at the bait, or listen to or hear what I express. Rather than expect a response, I assume that people will not write or reply—until they do so. Just as I do not assume that my call will go through unless the person or place I’m calling picks the phone up in that brief window when I’m dialing.
There is spontaneity in our lives, more spontaneity than we recognize when we are bogged down feeling overwhelmed by the mundaneness of life. To combat the drudgery, I am still leaving voicemail messages despite the increasing frequency that people no longer listen to voicemail messages. Or so I’ve been told. But, to be honest, I don’t fully believe it. Or I am not bound to accept this as unchanging. I bristle at becoming resigned to this state of the world, just as I detest false applications of interpersonal control. We all do better with less control in our lives, beginning with the concentration or dilution of control in the substructure of our consciousness.
washing dishes: a father’s glimpses 