It is easier to walk up a hill than it is to walk down a hill.


After being on someone's distribution list for a number of postings it's not very difficult to know what to expect. One person specializes in jokes, another in "awe-inspiring" photographs, yet another in links to web sites that for one reason or another are supposed to impress us. And of course we're always on the list of at least one person who thinks that what we really want to receive are chain letters telling us how beautiful life can be if we just accept others as they are. Often it gets to the point that simply seeing someone's name in the From section of a letter is enough to tell us what to expect.

But that's what happens in the more desirable cases where people still seem to express a well-defined persona through what they mail to others. Some people pass on everything that comes their way, and they become so prolific in this distribution of materials that one gets the feeling that they don't notice that what they sent us today contradicts what they sent yesterday. One day we'll receive a pearl of wisdom telling us that life is beautiful, and the next a list of inhuman acts people have perpetrated on others. Neither of these, in themselves, is unfit for distribution, but just what it is the person distributing them is trying to tell us becomes a legitimate question. Being a conduit for whatever comes your way doesn't seem to be (to me at least) a highly desirable goal in life.



Go to: Are there refrigerator doors in cyberspace?