Did you know there is a new language out there? It has been created from a variety of sources -- the Internet, e-mail newsgroups, online chat groups and the latest breed of pagers and cell phones that allow one to send written words. For example, the phrase “LOL” stands for “laughing out loud,” frequently used in response to a joke or humorous story. If the joke or story is particularly hilarious, you might respond with ROTFL, or “rolling on the floor laughing.” And if you just can’t contain yourself, you might be ROTFLMAO, which, loosely translated, means you are rolling on the floor laughing your behind off.

My nieces and nephews in Wisconsin often send me notes via e-mail or by MSN, an online message service that allows folks to chat back and forth in real time. I thought we were using English -- silly me. And this is how it was revealed to me just how out of touch I was with the latest style of expression. Whenever I communicated online with my teenage nephew Franz, I’d ask what he was doing. NMU was his typical response. What was this nemu? Did his parents know about it? Meanwhile, my niece Kat would inevitably punctuate our digital conversations with a BRB. Did she have indigestion? Was this the equivalent of an Internet burp?

As I was to discover, it turns out that NMU means “nothing much, you?” And to give someone a BRB is to say, “be right back.” Alright, it looks simple and clear once you get the translation, but without a key, this language is not so easy to decipher or understand.

I suppose some might see this new language in negative terms – our preoccupation with time and getting things done quickly reduces us to abbreviating our sentences, our words, even our spelling, thus chopping fluency into fragmented letter bits that race crazily between computers.

But, as with everything, there’s a positive face as well. As our linguistic creativity shapeshifts with every new digital means of expressing ourselves, we move in and out of the shape of language itself. In this light, word abbreviations and computer slang have become a kind of virtual nod, wink or pat on the back. Some may see this as negative as well, a corruption of live relationships and face-to-face meetings. But I talk to my nieces and nephews far more than I ever did before, and I’ve met a whole slew of friends and acquaintances I never would have had the chance to meet except through the Internet.

There can be no doubt that our connections are moving at an ever-increasing speedy rate. The places we are taken to (mentally, virtually, and in our relationships) by a simple push of a button are often unexpected, and sometimes surprising delightful. Certainly, there is room for error and misunderstandings -- an innocent comment misconstrued online in the absence of facial gestures and physical contact. And yet, there is also a funny side to all of this, a marvelous way that the universe reveals how the understanding of language adapts to and changes with each generation. How we talk and how we write both shapes and reveals how we see the world.

I came to understand this via exchanging e-mail letters with my mother, who also lives in Wisconsin. She began signing her notes to me “LOL, mom.” Sometimes she would end with a funny story or joke, but many times not. Why was she always laughing out loud? Did she even know what LOL meant?

“Well, of course I know what it means,” she responded. “Lots Of Love!”

From my side of the computer screen, I smiled. I wondered if in ten years I’d be creating my own word-understandings that were not necessarily the mainstream view and yet undeniably real and meaningful and oh-so much more endearing to my own daughter.

It’s 2003, and we are in a whirlwind of change. How do we fit in and where do we stand, not only in relation to our own individual wisdom and consciousness, but in connection to national consciousness and world wisdom? Do we have the inner ability to remain calm and clear-sighted as transformations of all kinds occur in our world?

Either way, you can’t go wrong with LOL.

Dawn Brunke is the author of Animal Voices ~ Telepathic Communication in the Web of Life, to be published in July 2002 by Inner Traditions International. See www.animalvoices.net for a preview.