The World's Greatest Friend-Making Machine
The World's Greatest Friend-Making Machine
By Nancy Pickard
"Epiphany! I haz one," as a cat might say.
This one's about friendship, upon which I pondered this week, as I drove 130 miles each way to have lunch with an out-of-town friend. She and her husband and a son had driven from Pennsylvania to attend a family wedding in Columbia, Mo. So there I was, motorvating down I-70, dodging raindrops and tractor-trailer trucks, when it came to me, my epiphany.
It has to do with how the internet has utterly changed the landscape of friendship in at least one major way. It used to be that as people got older—and not a whole lot older, really—friendship opportunities narrowed. The internet, bless its convivial soul, has changed all that for millions of us.
I mean, look at us! Right here, right now. Nice to meet you.
During school days, it's easy to make friends if you are the friend-making kind. Not everybody is, of course, and some can't make friends because of circumstances. If you're cripplingly shy, or you're "different," you may walk those halls alone whether you want to, or not.
But for most of us, the lucky ones, the reason it's easy to make friends in school is that we're all thrown together, all day long, for years on end. It's proximity that does it, which is also why it's pretty easy to make friends at work. And when your children are young and you're meeting their friends' moms and dads. And at church, if you get involved in it. And in volunteer work. Etc. While life is pointed outward, toward groups and activities where lots of people flock, friendships blossom.
But there comes a time—or used to—when our friendship tank starts to run out of gas. We get older and people die. We move, and suddenly it's not so easy to make close friends. All those people you'd like to get to know in your new town? They are too busy with their own lives; they already have all the friends they can handle, if not all the friends they might want. If they ignore you, it's not about you, it's about them not having an ounce more time or energy for one more friend, because that means getting to know somebody over a long period of time, and who's got the energy for that any more?
At a certain point, we look around and instead of having too many people to schedule for lunch, we have too few. And then it's hard to start over, like a brand new student, making new friends.
Enter, the solution! Also known as the internet. It's like the world's biggest school, where anybody can enroll, and there are enough people--and enough different kinds of people-- for anyone to find a friend.
Once within its open doors, you find the power of Constant Comment, like the famous tea.
Remember how when the web first started, and we began to hesitantly "talk" to people on line, we were scared of it? They might be serial killers. They might be sexual predators. Be careful! Don't try to meet them in real life! don't give out any personal information! Hide, cover your tracks, disguise yourself. . .
Well, that was impossible, wasn't it?
Those protective walls came down because we connect with people on line just like we do in the flesh. We feel chemistry with people on line exactly the way we do—or do not-- when we meet in person. And so our boundaries began to melt. We began to meet in meat life, and most of us didn't get killed by an ax murderer. Remember that? "You're going to actually meet her? Are you sure that's wise?? What if she turns out to be an ax murderer!"
The internet was our new "school corridor" where the proximity of constant conversation led us into friendship. Just as in school, we joined the Knitters Club, or the Political Club, or the Book Club, and we met people of affinity there, too.
The internet turns out to be the biggest friend-making machine the world has ever seen!
What an incredible blessing this is as people get older (or ill) and lose the physical opportunities for making friends. We retire. We stay home more. We lose income. Etcetera. In times not so far past, factors like those could have—probably would have—left us alone at 90 years of age, and missing people. Now any 90 year old who chats on a website or a blog or a forum can still have buddies. And any 100-year-old, too.
Making friends on line is wonderful, even without anything else added to it, but if we can then meet in person, too? All the better, richer, more satisfying, more--for lack of a better word--completing. Brave new world of friendship meets reliable old world of friendship, and it feels good.
I now have two sweet friends right here in the Kansas City area whom I met on line. One is Victoria, my concert buddy, whom I met on the website of a singer we love. The other one is Cathy, whom I met through a political blog.
The dear friend I drove to Columbia to see? Met her on line.
I've gone to Virginia Beach, Va., to spend a weekend on the beach with seven on-line friends. five of whom I'd never met before. I've had dinner in Seattle with another one, and stayed a weekend with four of them back east. I've met Andi and Jim, from Ohio, and Mary in St. Louis, and Jackie from Denver, and Dina from Moscow. Russia, not Idaho! I've taken a tableful of web acquaintances to a barbeque joint to listen to blues bands here in the KC area. When I go to conventions now, people come up and give me huge or shy grins, and say, "I'm Suzie!" And I realize, with a jolt of happiness, that it's one of my Facebook friends and we're meeting at last.
Instead of my friendship circle narrowing as I get older, it's getting wider and wider, deeper and deeper. How can something wider also get deeper, instead of getting more shallow? It can, partly because of the greater variety of people in my life now, introducing me to new views and viewpoints, and partly because of the synergy of so much talk about so many interesting things. We become greater than the sum of our parts. Just in the matter of age alone, don't you feel as if you are more closely acquainted with more people of more different ages than you've ever been? In one internet circle I belonged to at one time, we ranged in age from 27 to 62. I wonder what the range of ages is here, today, among people commenting and lurking We need one of those poll thingies so we could ask anonymously.
I think all this is going to change, is already changing, the nature of old age in the world. It's invigorating to exchange views, to make friends, to feel close to people, and now we know for sure that we don't have to be in the same physical space to do it.
This blog isn't about being careful out there. We get plenty of those messages, and we all know the rules by now. We also know the horror stories. While I have met a few people with whom I didn't share quite the same chemistry when we met in person as I did on line, that's the only negative I've encountered so far. For the most part, my judgment and instincts about this kind of thing have been good: to whatever degree I click with you here on line, that's probably also going to be how much we click in person.
Invisible web friends made visible!
Haz U got some?
