Virtual friendship

 

I remember my father telling me stories about his friends, their fun days, the times when electronic gadgets were seen in science fiction movies. They used to spend time with each other gossiping, talking about almost everything, laughing together. There were few, but good friends. But now I am in 21st century, where electronics have invaded our lives and smart phones are an integral part of a daily routine.

Recently one of my friend told me that although he had some 800+ friends in his Facebook account but he knew half of them and met very few of them. He wasn't joking, he was serious. Still he is a face book addict, keeps his account logged in 24 X 7, replies to the messages instantly, posts every hour and likes almost post of other friends; with this he boasts that he is one social person.

Term 'being social' seems to be losing its original meaning, I guess.

When we talk about Face book and 'being connected' to friends, it's mostly virtual. No one analyses why they became friends; why did they not just meet and walk away, for instance? But when it comes to breaking a 'real' friendship, it is a conscious and often, traumatic process, depending on the length and depth of the relationship. Many friendships just wither and die with the passage of time, rather like the unused neural connections in the developing brain of a toddler. These are relationships that have outlived their significance and just melt away with no pain to either party. But they too have touched lives, they too have had their part to play. Since friendships are so important, should we select our friends carefully? Should we list our requirements mentally and try to find a match, like a matrimonial website? Of course not!

The charm of friendships is that they can come to life anytime, anywhere. Their strength is that there is no formula or template for them. Their beauty is that we cannot always tell why they flourish or survive. We have friends who share our ideas and friends who don’t. We have friends who like the same kinds of food or movies as we do and friends who don’t. We feel generous with some, jealous with others. With some we feel safe and comfortable; with others we feel energized and enthused; or at times we feel protective and tender. Each friendship is a unique relationship, and each makes different demands and offers different rewards. Not every friendship can be, or even should be, of the intense ‘Damon-and-Pythias kind’; just as not every friendship should be of the ‘Facebook kind’. In real life, one can’t just press a button to ‘like’ and another one to ‘unlike’. How can you be a ‘good’ friend? Of course by being considerate, unselfish, and empathetic and, even more importantly, by being non-judgmental. But these things don’t happen automatically, not even by pressing the ‘like’ button. You will have to travel inwards and discover where friendships belong in your values pyramid and what you will be willing to invest in them. By understanding ourselves and our values better, we can understand our friendships and their value better. After all, friendship should mean more than the casual click of a button.

 

It's the same scenario with most of us. We have hundreds of — some even have 1,000-plus — friends on social networking sites, but only a handful of 'real' ones. Real friends whom we hang out with, share personal details and spend quality time with. And yet, we keep chatting with our virtual friends on social networking sites almost on a daily basis, instead of nurturing real friendships.

Do virtual friends count?

People are happier and laugh 50% more when talking to a friend face-to-face. Also, people find that the most satisfying relationships are with a handful of close friends, with an 'outer ring' of 10 significant others.

"Social networking sites are the easiest way to keep in touch with those countless people, who we wouldn't be able to keep in touch with due to our busy lives. However, the 'emotional touch' cannot be easily replaced by internet chats, comments and posts." The real connection only clicks when we are able to experience that friendship in person, otherwise it's like experiencing a vacation through a virtual tour.

"It is also possible that most people who are comfortable making friends virtually do so because it gives them an option of avoiding face-to-face (FTF) contact with others. They are worried about negative conclusions being drawn about them in a FTF meeting where they will not be able to hide their drawbacks (awkward mannerisms, speech deficits, language difficulty, etc.). Typing online also gives people time to respond, which is a luxury we don't have in FTF communications. This lack of time also reveals our lack of wit and poise in FTF (which we do not want to be known)," A clinical psychologist explains.

Face-to-face interactions are more satisfying

According to the study, people are happier and laugh 50% more when talking face-to-face with friends or via webcam than when using social networking sites. Thomas explains, "The reason could be that human brain reads subliminal cues while interacting face-to-face, which go beyond the individual reading of gestures, facial expressions and words. This integration helps us to better understand what the others are saying or hiding."

Talking on phone/texting vs. sharing a smile

As research is illuminating the human social networks that have existed since time immemorial, a parallel thread of inquiry is exploring a new kind of social interaction: online friendship.

But because Facebook “friends” are often what we call “acquaintances” in the offline world, researchers had to find a way to weed through a Facebook user’s “friendships” to find the most meaningful relationships. They developed a concept they call the “picture friend”—someone with whom a subject has appeared in a photograph posted on Facebook. The definition of a picture friend also requires the subject to have “tagged” the photograph with the friend’s identity. This helps weed out group photographs in which not everybody knows each other, and indicates that the subject wishes the association with the tagged friend to be recognized.

Walls are funny things

Walls are funny things.

They can be objects of protection, keeping whatever is behind them safe, sheltered, preserved and untouched. In a literal sense, the walls of a building help us remain relatively unaffected by the elements, and they offer support for the structure as a whole.
But walls can also be objects of obstruction, creating a barrier from the outside world and potentially harming the contents being guarded, either intentionally or as a result of misinformed fears. Relating to human nature, we put up walls to shield ourselves from perceived harshness, from anticipated hurt and danger that we feel we can only prevent if we hide ourselves behind something less breakable than our fragile hearts.
Even if our intentions for putting up these barricades seemed logical when we laid their foundations, some of us eventually find ourselves closed in and hardly capable of emerging from our confinement.
Because walls—though they are great for privacy and necessary safety—can also create a loneliness so vapid and cold that we forget who we are outside of them.
We forget how to connect or what it is we sought to protect in the first place, left to struggle with the curious predicament of longing for touch but not knowing exactly how to reach out, to meet on the other side of the shields we’ve built. We forget how the world looked to us before we made such divides, setting ourselves apart from the things we couldn’t stand to face and hoping that our feeble lines of defense would somehow be strong enough to keep us out of harm’s way.
But we soon figure out that things will happen regardless of our walls, that one way or another we will feel the effects of whatever happens beyond them and that eventually, we will have to face the things from which we aimed to hide in the first place.

And so, the walls must come down—a task much easier said than done.

But make no mistake, I do not condone bulldozing or mindless dismantling of something so intricately built. Instead, I believe in a process that encourages us to consciously take down the walls we’ve raised. This is by no means a complete guide to epically opening ourselves up to the world, but it includes a few things I’ve learned in my own adventures, informed by my experiences in taking down little pieces of one wall at a time:

1. Take a step back, look at the wall and acknowledge that it is in fact there.

Ignoring the identification of our walls and getting right down to demolition would be the equivalent of putting on a blindfold and swinging a wrecking ball at whatever’s around. We might hit something we meant to hit, but we also might ruin something useful, perhaps something we wanted to keep.
So take a look. See the wall, name it, inquire about its origins and understand why it’s there.
And remember, although we’re talking about walls in a largely negative context, their intentions can be good, aiming to protect us from real dangers (like a hurricane or a blizzard in one sense, chaos or pain in another). So, we can note the parts of our walls that are necessary as they contrast with the parts that are solely obstructive and ultimately detrimental. There is a difference.\

2. Decide what needs to change.

Certain parts of who we are as individuals are inherent to our existence. They are the foundations on which we build our unique stories, the road maps of our beings.
These traits are comparable to load-bearing walls that hold up an entire structure; if knocked down, the entire building is at risk for collapse. And just as we have to check for load-bearing walls before we even think about knocking them down, it’s important to realize that the walls blocking us from personal growth could be partially load-bearing, too.
For example, if I’ve built a wall specifically to keep myself from being loved by another, it’s probably because I’m afraid of allowing someone close enough to hurt me. Somewhere along the line, something told me that I needed to protect myself from pain I didn’t want to feel, and so this wall was built.
This of course is less than ideal because putting up a wall against love makes it difficult to ever experience the beauty of a relationship; although I am protecting myself from the not-so-good, I’m also denying myself the opportunity to experience the good parts.
By the same token, it would be foolish to take down this wall completely, stripping myself of any and all standards. Wrecking this wall would undermine my needs, swinging into the opposite extreme of being naively prone to heartbreak.
Therefore, I can recognize my standards as the parts I must keep and my fears as the parts I can demolish. My standards are the load-bearing segments of the wall, while my fears are merely causing unnecessary obstruction where there could be clarity and openness. (Trust me, I’m still working on this one.)
It’s important to remember that changing ourselves doesn’t mean uprooting and going against our truths. Sure, change can be drastic, and perhaps necessary on a large scale, but that doesn’t have to apply to all parts of ourselves. There are parts of us that bolster the essence of who we are, and these parts must remain even if we knock down the rest of the wall to which they once belonged; otherwise, we run the risk of being buried by an internal collapse.

3. Work slowly and with compassionate patience.

This is probably the hardest part to put into practice—patience.
When I want to change something, I want to do it now. I tend to take a “cold turkey” approach to everything I do, and while that can be effective for immediate results, I’ve learned that it’s certainly not the most sustainable way to approach my walls.
Instead of trying to tear down the parts I choose to eliminate, perhaps a better idea is to chip away at the unnecessary pieces more slowly and compassionately, understanding that this is a process and it will take time. (Again, I’m working on it.)
Maybe it’s best to start by putting doors in our walls, allowing for our discretion in being open or closed. Having the option could offer a smoother transition through the demolition process as we test the waters beyond our self-imposed limitations. Eventually, the solid wood door becomes glass, and the glass becomes a screen, and maybe then we remove the door altogether, leaving a beautifully and safely prepared opening where there was once a solid barrier.
Like I said, I’m still working on my own walls, but I believe that if we work mindfully, taking baby steps to carve out just the right space, we might just have a fighting chance to breathe the freedom of the outside air.
And I have a feeling that this freedom beyond our walls is worth the process it takes to get there.