Living Wittily, Social Communication, and the Modest Aim of Creating Conversation

Sometime today Living Wittily will have received 200,000 hits, which is no great milestone for a blog, even though the blogger eschews Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social communication. Interesting use of both social and communication when they become married without a conjunction. Social communication should be a tautology, if it's communication between human beings then it's social; if it's social then it involves inter-communication of those who can express themselves in terms that each understand. I suppose the question is, are all forms of communication social? And if they are, how to we differentiate between conversations face to face, conversations on phone, Facebook, Twitter with known friends, and conversations with that world out there with whoever reads something and responds to it. Which raises further the question when does an exchange of information, opinion, comment, gossip become a conversation rather than an impersonal exchange of floating data, random thoughts, serendipitous exchanges, and uncontextualised trivia?

I think it's when the communication is between people who even if they don't know each other, are looking for more than a forum to opinionate, and more than a network to barge into with self-expression intended to make that particular self noticed – and that as a process of self-identity construction. Such communication will only become conversation when it produces one of the most important strands in human relationships – continuity. It's the continuity of communication, the desire to turn comment into conversation, and offer personal opinion not as the put down answer but as the gift of further questioning in which each side enters a partnership of respectful speaking and listening.    

I can think of a few reasons for keeping a blog and offering thought, and viewpoint and insight – and whatever wisdom we learn, to whoever will read it. For me it's quite simple. The offer of all the above to whoever is patient, interested and trustful enough to read and ponder, to offer their own wisdom and insight, to value their own experience as well as the experience of the writer. When that becomes an exchange, conversation begins. Most folk who comment on Living Wittily are people I know, or have come to know, and quite a few of you I've not met. Some email and these become private conversations, and often they have enriched and persuaded and edited my thinking and sharpened my view of the world.

So in a life a wee bit busy just now I still try to keep Living Wittily going, offering a voice amongst the voices, and now and then offering my five loaves and two fishes into the mix and flux of this kaleidoscopic second decade of the third millennium, and hoping that readers might have some nourishment, and not expecting there are too many baskets full left over. Blog posts are like the water in a Scottish burn in spate – they swirl downstream and quickly disappear. But in the flow of words, the aim remains the same, and the motto from Robert Bolt's "Man for All Seasons" still expresses my own spiritual and intellectual disposition. There are few pursuits in life more fascinating, fulfilling, frustrating and fruitful than seeking to serve God in the tangle of our minds, and doing so as those who try to keep the first and greatest commandment – to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength.