Internet Friends or Real Friends?
Friends you have never seen, never will see.
Blogging friends. Instant messaging friends. The vocabulary on friends has changed with the advent of the cyber age.
Friends, according to conventional wisdom, are acquaintances for whom there is a mutual affinity. They were always there, or so it seems. New friends come into our lives with changing circumstances: in school, in business, in churches, clubs, sports groups, we widen our circles of connectedness. These kinds of friends are usually present and accounted for...we know them. We can see and interpret their moods. We read their body language. Most of them will move on outside our circles, and we will lose contact. With some friends, we nurtured a silent hope and expectation that we would always be in touch; "there for" each other when either head or heart called for the comfort and counsel we once shared. Typically, adults will have a minimum number of close friends who remain so throughout their lives. A person with one close friend is blessed. To have two is rare, and three is almost "an embarrassment of riches."
Ah, but the internet friend: a different case? Special case? Well, maybe. And yet....
Because this is someone you will probably never meet or see face to face, in the flesh, the effort to establish lasting bonds is difficult and often virtually impossible. In contrast to that negative thought, there is the equalizer factor that allows us to speak frankly, honestly, without the threat of reprisal or rejection, should our words be offensive to others. We may trease, provoke, stimulate, irritate, or otherwise offend the internet friend, and blithely walk away with the justification that 'net friends are not the same as real friends.
This bothers me.
I am optimistic and hopeful enough to believe there are countless friends waiting to become more significantly a part of a larger circle of people: lonely, depressed, discouraged, forgotten people. The huge advances in communications possible to us make it likely that we can break through the "conditional friendship" barrier and share most meaningfully.
A dear friend was thanking me recently for a simple kindness. He said, "You are so kind, especially for an internet friend." No! No! No! You are not my internet friend. You are my friend friend!
I do henceforth and forever renounce the concept that cyber friends are somehow second class friends, and are limited to a bloodless, easily discarded semi-life form. I love my friends whose faces, and in some instances, voices I would not detect in a crowd, yet whose lives, passing by mine, even though continents and natural barriers keep us physically apart, have so influenced, changed and, yes, blessed me so profoundly, I will forever bear the mark of such friends.
Friends you have never seen, never will see.
Blogging friends. Instant messaging friends. The vocabulary on friends has changed with the advent of the cyber age.
Friends, according to conventional wisdom, are acquaintances for whom there is a mutual affinity. They were always there, or so it seems. New friends come into our lives with changing circumstances: in school, in business, in churches, clubs, sports groups, we widen our circles of connectedness. These kinds of friends are usually present and accounted for...we know them. We can see and interpret their moods. We read their body language. Most of them will move on outside our circles, and we will lose contact. With some friends, we nurtured a silent hope and expectation that we would always be in touch; "there for" each other when either head or heart called for the comfort and counsel we once shared. Typically, adults will have a minimum number of close friends who remain so throughout their lives. A person with one close friend is blessed. To have two is rare, and three is almost "an embarrassment of riches."
Ah, but the internet friend: a different case? Special case? Well, maybe. And yet....
Because this is someone you will probably never meet or see face to face, in the flesh, the effort to establish lasting bonds is difficult and often virtually impossible. In contrast to that negative thought, there is the equalizer factor that allows us to speak frankly, honestly, without the threat of reprisal or rejection, should our words be offensive to others. We may trease, provoke, stimulate, irritate, or otherwise offend the internet friend, and blithely walk away with the justification that 'net friends are not the same as real friends.
This bothers me.
I am optimistic and hopeful enough to believe there are countless friends waiting to become more significantly a part of a larger circle of people: lonely, depressed, discouraged, forgotten people. The huge advances in communications possible to us make it likely that we can break through the "conditional friendship" barrier and share most meaningfully.
A dear friend was thanking me recently for a simple kindness. He said, "You are so kind, especially for an internet friend." No! No! No! You are not my internet friend. You are my friend friend!
I do henceforth and forever renounce the concept that cyber friends are somehow second class friends, and are limited to a bloodless, easily discarded semi-life form. I love my friends whose faces, and in some instances, voices I would not detect in a crowd, yet whose lives, passing by mine, even though continents and natural barriers keep us physically apart, have so influenced, changed and, yes, blessed me so profoundly, I will forever bear the mark of such friends.