well done is better than well said

Supposedly one of the ‘rules’ for good writing is to make more emphasis on showing than telling. Likewise, in theater, one encourages acting over performing. Let the audience and readers figure it out for themselves. Let them discover the truth without having the obvious overstated to them. 

I’m a big fan of words. But much though I love speaking and writing, I really do think there is a time when words are cheap. When saying a thing is… well not as good as doing. Certainly, no assemblage of vocabulary can do justice in describing the Golden Step dining room. Or… I believe, saying I love you or thank you isn’t enough to mean it. 

My delight in arranging bits of the English language does find impish delight in the current phenomena of Facebook statuses. I don’t deny it. A phrase will pop into my head in the car or on a run and I think – yeah… I can put that at the top of my profile and seem ever so clever. But that is just my performance as a smart, thoughtful person. What I do in the hours away from the keyboard proves the legitimacy of my heart.

Every once in a while, though, I let myself think that projection of goodness gains some solidity if I post something on my profile, if I incite my friends to do likewise… if we all draw attention to the thing that bugs us… well… that’s something more like acting and less like performing. Right? Because if I’ve got another person to THINK about something then I’ve accomplished my good deed for the day. Even if that thought only lasts the thirty seconds it takes to read my bit on the scroll down their homepage. Well, I’ve distributed good karma into the ether. But I haven’t done anything. I haven’t left my chair. I haven’t gone out there and made any change. I just got on the Facebook stage and said my lines.

And maybe that’s why these Facebook memes annoy me so much. Why it really annoys me when someone slaps up a prefabricated status or like on the social network. To prove they think and care about a serious issue. I don’t deny that they care… I just… don’t really understand what good it does. Does it really raise awareness? I know they say there is no bad publicity… but… there is useless publicity. Noise that pollutes the atmosphere and gets lost in the line of what people are having for lunch and political diatribes and who hates the rain. Is that really going to get us a cure for cancer? And, honestly, after reading the enigmatic snarky phrase of one’s purse location, is one woman going to get a mammogram? No.

I don’t know if this is the consequence of the fact we spend so much time on the Facebook stage. And maybe it is the catty, bitchy director in me. But I think we all need to learn how to act.