When the Bell Telephone System started doing commercials saying, “reach out and touch some,” I was disappointed, a little offended and kind of disoriented.
Because it was us massage therapists who, much more than the telephone companies, were actually reaching out and touching people. That phrase belonged to us!
The same now goes for so-called “social media”. It’s a new level of tele-and-videophonic communication – but still a long way from reaching out and touching someone.
The best proof of this is noticing how terrifically hard it is to deal with difficult emotions through facebook or email. Insults, hurt feelings, and miscommunication fly around like ufo’s. At that point we have to consider that these are, in many ways, “anti-social” media. Thank you, Michael Breaux, for that phrase and insight – “It seems that when you can’t see the hurt on another person’s face, it makes it all the easier to be cruel in order to feel better about your pitiful life.”.
Face-to-face communication and enough duration for people to really meet, really dialogue and work through their differences, sharing their pain. working through life’s challenges and sharing the fullness of life’s pleasures together – this is the medium where “social” really deserves that name.
The virtual “world” is, to some extent, anti-social. The actual world, the one in which we live, breathe, work and play together in direct interaction – that is the medium of society – our true home.
So massage therapists turns out to be the mid-wives to the re-entry into the real world. To paraphase the French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard, “Effective touch bears witness to a soul which is discovering its world, the world where it would like to live and where it deserves to live.”
So, everyday…let’s really…reach out and touch someone.