Update!

In the course of updating my msn messenger list, and getting rid of many unwanted email addy's - I found myself with many email addy's of people who have either stopped talking to me, or I have stopped talking to, or both.

I recently updated my msn profile...my name, picture, information. The new system got me thinking about this type of exchange of information, particularily between Native people. Of course, I speak of no one else but myself when I say that.

I had the mindset that because I had nothing to hide, I didn't have to "fear" anything. That by being truthful and transparent, I was somehow immune to some of the horror stories you hear about. Things are not quite so simple though. It's not fear that drives my new feelings about things, but what people do with the information you put out there. Words have the capacity to harm, to do damange to fragile ego's - especially my own.

I do not want to hurt anybody with my words, even if they mis-interpret them. Reading only words can be interpreted in whatever way you want, dependent on what emotions you have reading it. I have mis-interpreted things I have read, or agonized over words I have sent "out there" into cyber space. Once you press that send button, the one thought that I keep in mind (although sometimes too lossely), is something that was taught to me as a child.

Growing up in Alberta and on a quiet sunny winter day, I was told that whatever you spell in the snow you can never take back. What does that mean exactly? Or that spoken words put "out there", you can't take them back. I have experienced this first hand through this msn messenger system, or email system. It's the new way of writing in the snow.

Things I have put out there, I know I will never be able to take back. The unfamiliarity of it's powerful impact is now known to me, but there were times when it wasn't. I put things from the heart - including when my heart was troubled, or hurt and I had faith that whoever I meant to read those words, would somehow understand. I respected the reader would give me some benefit to know that my words were never meant to hurt or scare, or cause bad feelings. I trusted that, you as the reader, would be able to read the feelings and emotions I put into writing the messages.

This is so far from the truth. Words do not convey emotion, or at least perhaps I did not put the correct sequence of words together to evoke emotion, but as I wrote, I put the emotion into the keyboard. Can you feel what I am feeling right now? Probably not. I cannot even begin to guess what emotion you may feel reading this. If you like long winded blogs - you might be able to read some sort of emotion and think this is coming from my heart, if you think I am running on, which I can be prone to do, you might think this is a bit annoying.

There is emotion. There is emotion I think into every word you put "out there" in any medium. If you put no words, that in itself is saying something. But once you decide to press that send button, you transmit the emotions you put into the keyboard, for if one does not receive that emotion directly through the elctronic message, another will. You are not sending words, but rather, emotions.

I think that is the message from the writing in the snow story. Emotions carry the power behind the words. What you evoke reading may not be what I put into typing, and vise versa. But at some point, those emotions will transmit somewhere.