Is it strange that people can become involved in the lives of people they've never met, simply because they read their blogs? Today I read on the
barmaidblog that a couple of the people who were regulars at her bar and had begun dating as the result of a decidedly sexual bet on the outcome of a college football (or was it hockey?) game got engaged on Valentine's Day, and then that the girl had gotten bacterial meningitis a few days later, and died earlier this week.
Everything I know about these people I have learned by reading a blog, yet I still feel an urge to mourn for her. I never met her, have no idea what she looked like, what her favorite things were, or if I'd even like her. All I know is that reading about her death has left me feeling a sense of loss similar to what I've felt when hearing that one of my own cousins has died. I don't really know many relatives outside my immediate family, so their deaths are sobering, but not really painful news for me; and I suppose that's how this feels as well.
I guess it all doesn't matter in the end, but I just can't help wondering if the way people get involved in the lives of people who are hundreds or even thousands of miles away from them, and will likely never cross paths with them, ever, all because of reading a blog, isn't some kind of flaw in the human makeup. I mean, why should I care that some girl I've never met is getting married and having a dream honeymoon in Hawaii? Or that another is trying to overcome her demons and stop cutting herself? Or even that some girl that some other girl knew has died?
Then again, the whole world seems to mourn the passing of Heath Ledger, and I really don't care about him at all. So maybe I'm just going off because I mourn and wish I didn't; because I wish that I could make the lives of my blog-friends as seemingly separate from my own life as the life of a celebrity, even though I can't.
And in truth I don't actually want to keep my blog-friends' lives separate from my own, because I do consider them friends, if only in a periphery, we'll never meet but I still think you're cool and want to know you kind of way. So maybe it's not weird that I've become involved in those people's lives. Maybe it's just human nature to reach out to others and try to connect, and making those connections means you have to get involved and celebrate their joys and mourn their sorrows and just generally become, in a weird distant relations kind of way, a part of their world, just as they've become a part of yours.
Whether it's strange or not, I will say a prayer for that girl's people today.