Facing Facebook…

Supposedly one of the most used words in advertising is the word new. It’s sort of paradoxical when, if you think about it, most humans fear change. So doesn’t new mean something’s changed, or it’s going to? I am now facing Facebook. I know what it does and what it’s used for. I even teach marketing students how important it is. But, until recently, I didn’t put my money where my mouth is. Like Israel Kamakawiwo'ole’s 1993 album (is that now an old word?) Facing Future, I’m doing just that.

I brought up Iz, as Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, is more widely known because several years ago, a friend sent me a clip of Somewhere Over the Rainbow – one of the tracks one this album . The song was featured in the movie Meet Joe Black. With the email came a photo of what I first thought was a sumo wrestler floating on his back in a swimming pool. I thought it was a joke! So, what the heck; I clicked on the link and heard Iz sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow for the first time. But, I either couldn’t or wouldn’t associate that huge man with the biggest little voice I ever heard until I replayed it about twenty times. The little voice was big because it soared and if you ever thought the original Somewhere Over the Rainbow version could not to be topped; listen to this version.

Change can be bittersweet. I was afraid of change. Really, who isn’t? I was afraid of leaving my comfort zone. And, when I did, I surprised myself. The Facebook experience has been almost the same kind of experience except, yeah, I thought I really knew what it did and how it worked. But, I really had no direct experience with it. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said, “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” My horizons have also expanded.

Timothy Leary, on the other hand, an educator and the LSD guru in the drug-culture of the Sixties and Seventies, was all for expanding your mind. “My advice to people today is as follows: if you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.” We know now that you don’t have to drop acid (LSD) to tune in and you don’t need to drop out and turn your back on society either. All you have to do is tune in to what’s going around you. Facebook really isn’t a big waste of time as Betty White perhaps jokingly said.

So far, Facebook has been a huge boost in helping me with a lot of “things” but more especially, in my search for the missing members in my family tree. I’ve been dabbling in genealogy for over twenty years and have the Fortier line back to 1593 in Normandy. Yet, my biggest challenges have been finding people born here in the United States in the last half of the last century.

Back to the word new for just a minute; based on a Yale University study conducted a few years back by their Psychology Department’s report, number ten in the top ten words used in advertising was – new. Number nine – save and followed by safety, proven and love; discover, guarantee and health up to results, in the number two slot, and finally, numero uno – you! No surprises there!

Wrapping this blog up I could say, we’ll change if we can save time or money or feel that any promised safety in our migration from our comfort will be proven and, as such, we’ll love how brave we are and how we’ll eventually discover many new, wonderful and beneficial things. And, yes, that we can remain assured with a guarantee because, after all, we can control how we access what we need or want. Above all what is new, is good for our mental health since we embark on this adventure expecting specific results that will improve or enhance some or all of the you we care about most - us!

One final and perhaps ironic note, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's fans shortened the big guy's long name to the tiny - Iz. If only he could have won his life and death battle to reduce his 757 pound body. He died just four years after his Facing Future album was released; catapulting him to fame beyond his beloved Hawaii.