Social media has left a sour taste in my mouth of late.
When I was younger, I had convinced myself that I had friends in my life that I mattered to. I was also in a relationship where I thought I was married to my best friend. Upon closer examination, I’ve come to realize that there aren’t really that many people who really know me, or to whom I really matter.
This is not any sort of indictment against anyone who believes that they are my friend. This is mostly an observation on what qualitifes as “friendship” these days.
How well do you think you know your “friends”? I’m not talking about your nominal social-media “friends”. I’m talking about people who you categorize as “friends”, regarldess of some social media application
Are these people ones you would reach out to if you hadn’t heard from them in a while? Are these people who you will miss if they suddenly passed from this world? Are these people who you would find yourself regretting some lost opportunity to communicate with if they suddenly disappeared from this world?
I recently conducted an experiment on social media where neither “ friends” (with whom you have stayed in contact with me in one way or another for the last thirty-eight years), nor my progeny noticed that I had dropped off of Facebook for a week. No one batted an eye.
It is somewhat sobering and disconcerting, how little I matter to anyone. If I fell off the face of the planet, the only souls who would take notice would be my cats. My professional colleagues might catch on in a few days; worse case scenario, they’d notice within a week. My other social and familial connections would probably take the better part of a motnh to realize that I’d vaporized, best case scenario.
While I try not to measure my own worth based on how other people assess me, the previous paragraph does give me pause.
I suppose that it doesn’t really matter what my death would be to anyone show survived me. After all, I won’t be around to take note. On the other hand, trying to infer or gauge one’s value based on how your death might impact them, is an interesting philosophical exercise.
As far as I can tell, my presence, or lack-there-of, doesn’t really matter to anyone. This is probably my own fault. After all, I was married for twenty years but decided that it was better to be alone than to be in a relationship with a stranger, who did not treat me with respect. Of course, I had cultivated that relationship while not cultivating others, which left me pretty isolated when all was said and done. The fall out being that my post-divorce support system was pretty shallow.
Since the divorce, I have tried to cultivate new friendships and relationships. Unfortunately, I think that I’ve lost the ability to trust anyone enough to allow tham “in”. I don’t trust people enough to get close to new people. And, experience has taught me that I can’t really rely on the people who’ve been in my life for decades.
Therefore, when I am feeling particularly isolated or undervalued, there’s no one who I can rely on to help shore up the shakey edges.
C’est lat vie. Ultimately, I think that the vast majority of us are navigating this experience by ourselves, including the majority of so-called married people that I know.
I wish you all a better assessment of the human experience than what I have had...
