{i love & hate you all[

We try not to hurt anyone. That’s the goal. At least, it has been stated as a goal. I heard it. I’ve said it.

We do what we feel we should in a way that we believe to be fair to everyone involved. We don’t want to hurt anyone. We say what we say and tell what we tell and give the glimpses that we are able. We don’t want to mislead. We don’t want to cause pain. We don’t want to cause strife.

But we just might.

This is what we have to come to grips with. The possibility that each thing we think we are doing to protect others may not be. That in our effort to not cause difficulty, we have caused pain instead. Even though our stated goal was to not hurt anyone. This is the choice we make with each action. With each decision. And it is ours to make.

But we don’t always see the other side. Our entire goal is to not hurt the other side, but because we are not on it, we don’t actually see it. We think we will do what we do and say what we say and act how we act in an effort to cause no pain. But we have not been them. At least, not today.

So we guess.

At our best, we are able to put ourselves in their shoes and act in the way that we would then want. But there are other times when we cannot. We simply do not have the experience required to put ourselves in their shoes. We do not know how we should act because we are incapable of understanding their motives and desires. We cannot know how they will or do feel because we have not or do not feel it. We cannot know how they will or even might react because we have not walked their walk. We think we do. We allow reason to provide us with answers. But that is a lie. That is our fallacy. It is our pride stepping in to say that we know what we do not know. This is especially arrogant because sometimes, not always, but sometimes…

Sometimes we could simply ask.

~ Christopher]

It began last night as reply to a simple tweet. After awhile, a couple of friends had jumped in and tweets were flying back and forth, all in good fun. And then things were kicked into the next gear. An email was received saying one friend had been tagged in a Facebook post by another. I suppose twitter’s character limit just got to… limiting.

Over the next couple of hours, there were over 200 comments across 3 profiles by 6 friends. Comments were coming in as fast as you could refresh the pages, each funnier than the last. It was an excellent evening among friends. Friends who are separated in some cases by other a thousand miles. Friends who live in 4 cities across 3 states.

It was as close as these friends were going to get under normal circumstances. And it was all spontaneous because the infrastructure was already there to support it. No one had to set up a meeting time for a conference call. No one had travel. No one had to think about it. No one had to contact the others to say “hey, get on facebook!”. No, Facebook just emailed whoever was tagged in the initial post. GNotify notified whoever wasn’t logged into their email account. Or maybe the email was pushed to their smart phone.

This is the true power of the internet. Sure, you can get up to the second data or buy the latest junk while in your pajamas or read the news from a foreign newspaper. But bringing people together is what it is all about. This is why I work on the web. This is why I bury myself in technical specs and obsess over layouts at one in the morning. It is all about bringing friends, both old and new, together. The web is about giving people the ability to live better lives, to live happier lives.

Sometimes we just need to be reminded why it is we got into our chosen profession, whatever it is, and why we have decided to stay there. For me, this is it. If at the end of the day, people aren’t better off and happier than when they started, then I have not succeeded. So I will keep reading specs, and doing research, and experimenting with code into the depths of night, because this is what drives me.

Why do you do what you do?

~ Christopher]