The power of humanity

It's been an interesting journey to spend the first 20 or so years of my life in a mostly non-digital world and all the subsequent years in a hyper-digital world. I was in college from '95-'99 when the internet was still getting it's legs, so 90% of my papers were researched with books and articles and microfilms.

There was no social media of any kind in high school, college, and for the five years post-college. Ex-boyfriends and ex-friends stayed elusive and out of touch, there was no photo obsession, and there felt (to me) less of a focus on how it looks like you're living than how you're actually living.

But wedding planning and moving and pregnancy and parenting in an internet era has been a god-send. Easy access to information has saved my sanity thousands of times over. Not to mention that it's allowed me to feel like friends and family members all over the country are right here in my life even though they can't sit at my dining room table.

It's been an interesting thing to watch unfold. However. The pace of the world today and the amount of information overwhelms me on a second by second basis. Not tragically, just in a quiet way where it affects me. It's so easy to feel small, and it's so easy to feel like you have nothing new or interesting to contribute because it's already out there. And the beauty of the world is that that's not actually true.

Technology, regardless of stellar attempts, will never be able to usurp humanity. And every once in a while something comes along, something so simple, that really changes the world in a profound way. Dan Savage's It Gets Better campaign, started last fall, is doing just that. All he did was record a video of him and his boyfriend talking about how being a gay youth today can be hard, but it gets better, so please don't kill yourself. And it struck a beautiful chord and has saved lives.

I was reminded of all this the other night while watching Glee and Google Chrome used his campaign in their commercial. It absolutely made me tear up at the power of it all. Watch the commercial and the original It Gets Better video below.