Off-line thoughts about on-line interactions

Just a few thoughts about interacting with others on internet:

1. Understand what your place is: there are MILLIONS and MILLIONS of people on internet.... You are one amongst those millions. There are crazy, they are sex deprived men and women looking for God-knows-what, there are entertainers, there are bored people with nothing better to do, there are people looking for better life perhaps, there are people preying on others for whatever reasons, etc, etc. Who are YOU?!! Do you know?

2. Talk with one another without expectation: You may never meet the person in the other computer, you may never discover who they truely are. If you have no expectation, you will never have a reason for regret, never have a reason for disappointment.

3. Be nice without reason: What do you have to lose??? Nothing!!! But perhaps at least there is someone out-there, perhaps around the corner from where you live or on the other side of this world who can benefit from some warmth in their haert/soul for a few moments without you ever knowing it.

4. People are people: No matter where they are, how young, how old, how slim, how fat, what race, what religion, what relationship status, people are just like YOU. Treat them online with the respect you wish people to treat you with in real life... they will notice it....it's becoming quite a rarity.

5. Care without condition: Don't lay conditions when talking to others, otherwise don't talk to them at all.  You are not in here for business...at least I would hope not!!! But, always be careful, you may know who you are but you never know who is behind the other screen.

6. Don't make an obsession: REAL life will always remain outside your door no matter how much you enjoy your friends online. Whilst real life may not be easy everyday, spending more self-energy on improving one's life is much more fruitful in the end than trying to hide in an online fantasy.

7. Be happy: At every turn, something happen and we discovered a new landscape on the harizon. We take a photo, we write something so we will never forget.

Something about TRUST!

No matter friendship or relationship, we all agree trust always comes first. Whilst trust is the key and we all set it as our top priority, we seldom realize that this most important component is also the most fragile.

All it takes is one time of breaking that trust, one lie, one affair, one misplaced quote for this trust to be gone forever. Crossing cultural barriers is difficult, friends, take your time to understand each other because the trust you have is earned, not given.

....

Oh not because happiness exists,
that too-hasty profit snatched from approaching loss.

But because truly being here is so much; because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.

...Ah, but what can we take along into that other realm?
Not the art of looking, which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing.
The sufferings, then. And, above all, the heaviness, and the long experience of love, - just what is wholly unsayable.