On The Digital Web and Friendships
Commentary, Life Lessons Comments (1)
I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me. – Abraham Lincoln
There are times in your life that your friends will be mad at you and there is nothing you can do about it. Further more, as frustrating as that is, they won’t respond to tell you. But are they mad, or are you not communicating in a way they will respond. This is more than a life lesson, it’s the truth.
Even as we get closer and there are ways to contact more people, we get picky about the way we do want to get contacted. Some of the people I know refuse to talk on the phone, texting is all they will do. A lot of people email, but not their parents, so talking to parents becomes a chore. I have a friend who emails me every month or so. I don’t bother texting, calling or even leaving twitter messages. Yet I know her Iphone is in her hand always and she’s checking it obsessively. It annoys me a simple conversation takes 6 months to complete, yet there is nothing I can do about, so I stick it out, because I don’t want to use the mediums she wants me to use.
This is the dilemma of the age we are in, where there are so many ways to get things mixed up thur texting, email, left voicemails, twitter websites, social networking sites and forums, but often enough, the root cause of your friends no longer being your friends, is the absence of you on those mediums.
Here are the truths of our current digital life.
- Did you have a friend where you were as tight as pod people, yet when they moved away, they are gone forever.
- Do you have a friend who obsessively checks their phone/iphone/crackberry, yet never returns your calls, texts or emails or if they do they do so days later. Did you mention it to them and get ignored even more?
To collapse the bridge of incommunication they often ask, Do you yahoo, Aim, Jabber, gmail or ICQ or MSN, do you facebook or myspace, or have you read their live journal or blog? Do they often say, “I’ll text you?” Often, what they ask for is the only way to reach them quickly and immediately. It’s not the method they use the most, but it’s the way they want you to interact with them.
Here is my advice, and it’s not even my advice, it’s that of a song:
Understand that friends come and go, but what a precious few should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps and geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.
Everyboy is Free (to wear sunscreen) by Baz Luhrman
The Digital web is more than the internet, it is the web of communication hubs that we now are forced to check, to keep up with the people we want to still call our friends. You can get lost in any web, so bring a light; it’s indeed scary in there.
OceansOfThought @ March 20, 2008
I am an email junkie, I’ll admit it; I check intermittantly throughout the day (almost any day). I love being able to type my thougths, my handwriting is dismal at best, and for the most part I stopped writing letters a long time ago. I also like that I can edit my thougths so that I say precisely what I mean, rather than slipping my tongue and having to justify saying something not quite right. Not to mention the convenience of having the same functionality at home as at work and the relative anonymity of not being overheard.
My girlfriends are constantly rolling their eyes at the dinosaur technologies I still use for my verbal communications; I am one of the very few that still does not have a cell phone, not even an uncorded phone, mine is plugged into the wall in my kitchen and keeps me tethered to 3 or 4 feet. Even so, the are some people I’d much rather talk to on the phone, my parents, my sister, my friends I want to make plans with.
Some things I’ll no longer talk about even on the phone, I’ll demand that a personal rendez-vous be arranged (unless proximity is an issue), you know the inevitable conversations having to do with actual emotional feelings rather than just naughty flirtations.