The Parts That Don't Fit In The Template

This was a bit of a prose moment from a few years ago, lamenting on how precisely our puny human lives are compartmentalized on social networking sites. To be read in High Chant or not at all!

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Losing ourselves in the moment.
Collectively.
Individually.

There is no continuity of the self, 
now it is perpetuity of the self.
When growth is stunted by having every step 
decried to everyone who ever knew of them.

There are no actual leaps, only our leaps in perception.

Now every thought,
every action,
documented with precision,
reactions unfolding in the feeds,
spiraling outwards like fractals based upon squirrely maths.

Reality is neatly enfolded in what appears on the first page of my facebook.
What my status is, I is, it seems.

Where is the mystery of the self?
Where is the joy of discovering the self in conversation with another,
be it the Buddha on the road, or,
the sudden exaltation at finding a new aspect in an old friend..
.. an old friend, in a new one..

It's all there on the page,
filled in with meticulous detail,
rated on a scale, cross referenced and spell checked
and indexed according to compatibility.

People used to try to make an impression.

Now, I am the impression.

I am a target market.

My entire personality, I have volunteered.
Employment history, education, interpersonal connections,
Popular culture affiliations.
Even statements like this very NOTE..
.. all transform the complexity of a lifetime in my skull,
and condense it into a profile to be displayed as a crisp, sterile page.

We can do nothing if we can not love ourselves.
We are nothing unless we love ourself.
We have nothing without that intangible self.

Hold on to those parts of you 
which do not fit onto these templates.
Those are the reasons I love you.