TOUCH

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Thursday, December 30, 2010 at 4:02am

" It's the sense of touch… I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something." - Crash (2004)

A lot of people out here who live among us, but feel as if they are completely ALONE. Im not talking about the homeless brotha you passed downtown. I'm talking about some of you, who live to work...those who smile when they are dying on the inside...those who live "double lives" because they feel that they can't tell anyone who they REALLY are or whats REALLY going on in their lives...its not that they don't want to talk....They DO want to release...but fear not being heard.

We have more access to one another than ever before in history, yet we spend more time than ever before mentally alone

This isn’t a “soapbox”…it’s a plea. It worries me that we have become so reliant on texting, email, facebook & Twitter to speak FOR us, that we have forgotten how to interact with one another as friends and family. I know its affected the level of professionalism in engagement among college students….shoot, some of you are incapable of carrying a 5 minute conversation & that’s downright scary. But, bigger than that, we are at a place in society, where we don’t even know the people bound to us by blood…

We have family all over this country and don’t know a thing about em…and its not like we are being held by the slave master anymore….oh but we are enslaved…now its all about how “busy” we are…but I bet we’ll find that time to make it to yet another funeral of a family member that we should have made time for while they were here.

Recently we packed my GranAnna's belongings to move & I ran into many treasures, but the most significant ones were the letters of a 1st grade Diana talking to her mother about being good from now on...that was my mom & the words of a young girl worried about her 1st day of college, written on that 1st day, back in the fall of 1984...that was me.

The mothers of MY generation won't have those treasures...

The actual print from our children’s hands....some of us are blessed that our children are gifted, and actually put pen to paper....see I have 4 poets in my life, so I hear their Truth that you all will never know, in their written thoughts...from the youngest to the oldest...their emotions...the issues that matter most to them....I have record...but will you?

Last night I posted an old Teena Marie song called "Dear Lover". In this song, just like Aaliyah's, she talking to her significant other, using HER own words & thoughts, in written word form...not the words of a card creator, or the few sentences that fit into a text message, but a letter that had been written by hand, stamped & mailed to someone simply because they mattered enough to buy & stamp & drop in a box…it is a form of touch.

When was the last time you wrote a letter?

And What about your friends?

Where family is “circumstantial” in that you can’t choose who your related to, FRIENDS are mutually chosen and I think can become family in every sense of the word…if those friendships are properly maintained. “So Whacha Sayin Val?”

I’m saying that friendships are taken for granted all the time….Lopsided friendships, where he or she is listening to you, but you don’t even know that persons background…If you are not SHOWING that you appreciate that bond, trust that it will surely disappear over time….We all tend to talk a good game but perception is reality all day baby, and if I FEEL like you ain’t treating me right…your not.

Do you Really Listen to your friends, or is 85% of y'all friendship them listening to you?

Look people are getting snatched out of here when we least expect it and too many are saying “I never got a chance to tell you” in response…My pastor used to say “Give em their flowers while they can still smell them”…I think that’s what I’m trying to say. I get that all of us are not “touchy-feely. Touching one another on a mental or emotional level has more to do with “treating me like I WANNA Be treated”…not how you’d prefer to be treated…might not match up…but see the key? You’d have to know who I am to know how I wanna be treated..think about it. You gotta talk to me to know me…See my facial reaction…hear my voice inflection… know WHAT matters to me…and act on that.

This was supposed to be a good old end of year Blog, but this has been heavy on my mind…Call your people more...TALK...Lets work to Love Each other more as an action phrase in 2011…Remember fam…”We All We Got”.