Face-ing ourselves; Face-ing others

by Robin Hoagland

No one wants to be too predictable. 

No one wants to be told that a sophisticated software program can look at who you are online and predict your next purchases, your social activities, your politics …or what you’ll have for dinner that night.  It questions the whole concept of individuality and identity – the very things that make us us.

I’m different, we think to ourselves.  No one can possibly know the whole of me.  No matter how much information is on my Facebook page.  No matter what I posted yesterday.  I’m different today.  I’ve learned.  I’ve grown.  I’ve changed my mind.

And yet, we still want to feel a certain consistency within ourselves and with our friends.  We want to know that some things can be counted on – kindness, unselfishness, trustworthiness.  That others can count on us for these qualities.  That we can count on these with our friends.

All 642 of them?  Are they all friends we can rely on?  Friends who won’t change on us in fundamental ways?  Or is that potential for unexpected shifts in our relationships keeping us online a lot longer and with a lot more anxiety?

Where’s the program that predicts satisfying relationships?

Maybe what we’re searching for on Facebook and other online networks is something found only through a deeper sense of who we really are.  We need to look beyond our activities and interests and social contacts defining us.  There’s an individuality within each of us that we’re intuitively aware of and even protective of.  It feels greater than we can fully express in words or music or art.  What we’re feeling is our innate spirituality.

Inspired people throughout the ages have linked the essence of who we are to a divine source: God, Spirit, the unseen and unlimited power that animates all that is.  That invisible power has also been called eternal Love – infinitely fresh in expression but unvarying in quality.  Because of all that God is and expresses in us, you and I possess the ability to love with a spiritual consistency that makes us valued friends. 

A nineteenth century thinker saw how this spiritual sense of identity gives us “enlarged individuality, a wider sphere of thought and action, a more expansive love, a higher and more permanent peace.  (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p.265)  It’s a perspective that keeps pace with every advance in technology and social networking.

When we look to Spirit to define who we truly are, we’ll find that wonderful balance of uniqueness and continuity – a never-ending kaleidoscope of spiritual qualities that brilliantly color our lives.  And with growing confidence and irrepressible delight, we continually make new discoveries about ourselves.  No computer program can keep up with who we truly are. 

Gaining this inspired sense of identity strengthens us and improves all our relationships, whether we’re online or not.  And we realize it’s not how many friends we have.  It’s how much spirituality we see in ourselves and others that makes any friendship reliable and enduring – and truly worth counting.