I see two friends regularly, both of them introverted immigrants from very different parts of the world. They are awkward on the telephone, and it is always a challenge to get a conversation started with either of them because we seem to share little in common. But they were both professionals in their own fields (one an economist and the other a technical writer and scientific editor), and they often have insights that make me rethink my own positions. There are very few weeks in the past twenty years when we have not talked to each other.
Almost all the people I have seen in the course of my work or recreation clearly had more points of contact with me than these two. Yet we rarely saw each other outside the times we were thrown together by circumstances. We did business, played tennis, even went to parties together. But we could go months without seeing each other without giving it a thought. This situation is not unique: how often do you go out of your way to see your relatives?
When I was very young, it seemed as if everybody I knew had something to say to me, and it was usually about what I had to know, how I should act, what was important. They were teaching me the state of the world as they saw it and the values I should carry through life.
One of those values was the importance of staying connected with others. As can be expected, though, all of those people have moved on to another world and broken the connection. I remember this when I talk to my grandson about social obligations because I know my daughter, his mother, and her husband are creating a society of their own, which will touch my own more and more marginally as time goes by. And then we will never see each other again. It is inevitable. That's life.
It is typical of our times to offer to do lunch with somebody we have no intention of seeing again. I try not to do it, but it has happened to me more times than I care to recall. I remember the first time. A friend had left the company but had kept up telephone contact, at first daily, then weekly, then unpredictably. Finally, the calls would end suddenly with an urgent announcement that there was somebody else on another line, but couldn't we do lunch sometime? Despite these empty promises to get together again, we saw each other only once more, in a shopping mall, as I was going up an escalator and she was passing me in the other direction. It was a symbol of our entire relationship.
Used to be, even in my lifetime, that the only way to get to know somebody was to meet and talk and realize that here was a person you shared something with. Now, with social networking groups, you can meet hundreds of people whose interests touch yours at one point or two and whose observations may even inspire you to comment in return, but who would never become your real friends.
We say we touch these people, but how many of them would we visit if they were seriously ill in the hospital? How would we even find out they were ill? How many of them would want to see us at their son's wedding? Our relations with them are limited to a single interest, a single attitude. People are more complex than that.
Remember the man who invited a hundred local Facebook friends to a party and nobody showed up. We want to touch other human beings and our technology gives us the tools to begin the process, but we are no longer in the habit of following through. The trick is not to reach out. It is to reach back.
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