Thursday, April 26, 2012

"Oh well never-mind!"

 
I feel like Emily Latella (Gilda Radner) on SNL many years back. "Oh well never-mind."  It seems as if the world is going out of control and people are mad as hell with each other over politics, economics, religion and a load of other things. I recently had a friend take me off as a fb friend. We have been friends in real life for twenty+ years and in too many differences of viewpoints I was told it was unwelcome talk and  now we are no longer friends. 

What made this so easy to happen? Well, it is this 21st century age of instant communication. How impersonal with each other this technology has made us. How easy to fly off the handle and trash a friendship of so many years in just a moment's post. I thought the phone had made it easy to hide behind when you wanted to verbally fight. Then the email gave us cover to snipe at one another. But, I was wrong now you don't even have to post you can just un-friend them and not even get into an argument.

How easy is that = Like -- poof you're friends; Unlike -- no longer friends. That is such an easy way to not deal with the differences between to people = two friends. How easy it is to not deal with each other; sit down together and discuss ideas, attitudes, dreams, aspirations and life. And 'poof' you no longer have a friendship with each other. Twenty+ years of shared times and memories gone. 

It is too easy for us to fold up our tent, steal off in the darkness and walk away.  We have made it too easy to throw away people and our friendships with them. I don't believe in divorce but I am enough of a realist  to know that it happens but I am grieved when it does. And this feels to me like a divorce from a loved one. Will I be fine - oh sure, but I still like to think that I am important to my friends (as they are to me) and they enjoy my friendship.  But this time I guess I realize that it has become easy to be "un-friended" and be with out a friend.         C.