|
Jill
|
 |
« on: February 15, 2011, 11:37:03 AM » |
|
Please understand that whatever I write reflects but one person’s opinion, my opinion.
In answering my own question, like too many who were here with me at the near beginning, I believe, probably not. I mean, REALLY probably not. I say that with sadness and loss, and actually, even with a kind of despair. I say that, telling you that the idealism of my youth has taken a big hit as I’ve watched helplessly what, for me, has felt like the deterioration and disintegration of a community and a world-wide forum that could have been.
But I decided this morning that it’s always easier for us to rag and rail, to criticize and bemoan, and ultimately, simply to give up and leave, to quit sapping our limited energy, to try to cut our losses. Sometimes, of course, that giving up the ghost is the mentally and emotionally healthier thing for us to do. The more intelligent response. (But sometimes, too many times, I’m afraid, I’m just not real bright….).
There’s probably not one person here, whether they’re posting anymore or not, not one person who has been at KivaFriends for a substantial period of time who couldn’t rattle off a really long list of reasons why they think that KivaFriends has diminished as it has. I sure could, a really really long list, but in my mind there’s nothing constructive to be gained from reiterating what many of us already know. The negative stuff.
I decided a little while ago, earlier this morning, that even though I feel pretty hopeless about it, I’m going to make one more effort. I’m going to make that effort, thinking to myself what a sorry actually pretty pitiful idiot I am not to have let go a long time ago. I’m going to make that effort really because I truly loved the idea of KivaFriends. For me, there was so much hope in it, so much beauty in it, so much promise and potential in it to the point that to be melodramatic about it, it kind of kills me to have to give up on it.
So, that said, I’m giving myself, I’m basically giving the Forum just a little over a month, til the last day of winter, March 19th. I’m going to try to do whatever I can to restore what I’m afraid may “forever” have already been lost. Or, maybe it was never really there. Maybe it was never really possible in the first place. I don’t know.
What I do know is that I can’t do it by myself. I’m a million billion per cent sure to fail, if it turns out that it isn’t worth it to a whole bunch of you to try, yourselves, to participate, to be positive, to share, to be vital, caring, responsibility-taking, giving members of this would-be community.
That’s a decision that each of you will be making for yourselves. I can’t make it for you. And actually, I think it’s your right to make that decision for yourselves, and without pressure. You do what’s best for you.
Whether I personally continue to post, though, whether I continue to participate after that last day of winter, depends. To be my corny self about it, it depends on whether there will have been enough of a positive and insides-giving response on the parts of a whole lot of you to suggest, by the first day of Spring, that a rebirth, a rekindled hope for KivaFriends really might be possible. I told you at the outset, I don’t have a lot of hope, not at all. But for me, it’s worth one last effort. Whether it will be for each of you, you get to decide.
I’m out of here for now, telling you that I soon will articulate, hopefully in posts that are tremendously shorter than this one, a number of my own ideas of how we might improve the Forum. I also intend to try to post, over the next few weeks, a bunch of times about a bunch of different things.
Those posts won’t strictly be about Kiva and KivaFriends, though many of you know that I can and I do see connections between Kiva (and KivaFriends) and nearly everything else. My own mind (and heart?) demand breadth and depth and terrific variety. I, personally, want to and need to learn, and I want to feel, and I want to care and I want to grow.
I almost always have conceptualized the Forum, and have tried to view it as though I had just happened on it for the first time. I have so often thought about it, when looking at the different posts, from the perspective of:
If this were my first time here, and I saw what was being talked about, would I be engaged? Would I be interested? Would I have any desire, based on what I was seeing among the recent posts, to come back, to maybe participate, to give and share of myself? Would I feel that it was a safe place? Would my first (and second and third) impression of it be that it was a learning place, a mind-and-heart-and perspective-expanding and giving place?
I have so often thought – what if we all tried to post, maybe not always but as much as possible, with those things in mind? What a gift we could have.
Jill
|
