These Thoughts on Twittering are merely my own - and really only thoughts, not a blue print for the future. I should have added that there are joys to be had at Twitter, as well as dangers.

Thoughts on Twittering….

I’ve been following, more or less, (since I still have to learn about “streams” and “retweets”) this give and take – this punching and counter-punching – all revolving around the fandom of Russell Crowe.

And it has started me thinking whether we really understand how our words can affect so many, and whether we have any real-world knowledge of the people we are writing about or responding to.

I have some opinions on this, and, since I am way past middle-age, bear with me. I have a different perspective on life, having lived it longer than most of the other twitterers in our particular corner of the cyber universe.

Has there been much thought given to our real lives? The lives we hide behind that silly moniker and those words we can fit into our restricted 149 limit. What we might be going through physically and mentally - Whether we are fragile personalities or damaged ones - Whether our days are filled with stress, with family problems, with financial ones, with loneliness.

I advise a look deep into our hearts before we click on the “tweet” button, and another look at the words we have written. Do we really want to hurt another human being? One we hardly know? I don’t think any of us set out to do that.

I think of Thumper’s “if you can’t say nothing nice, don’t say nothing at all.” Good advice.

What I’m going to do right now myself, is go read a book – a little Annie Dillard or Wallace Stegner or maybe Mary Oliver’s poems. The rest of you, go to your corners, come out, fight clean and shake hands afterwards, as Jim Braddock would say if he was still with us.

Murph (aka@silvermurph)