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increpatio
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« Reply #15 on: 19:06:55, 30-10-2008 » |
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I'm no longer on Facebook or Bebo (which is quite popular in Ireland); I removed myself from them in a fit of madness six months ago. It is a nice way of passively maintaining contact, but the sites irritated me, and took up more time than I wished to give them. The one friendship I had that was mainly kept afloat via facebook has been dealt with by other means since.
I had one mildly voyeuristic evening spent looking through all of my old national and classmates' profiles on Bebo. I don't know what I felt really. Mainly the sense of being a voyeur. My past couple of random catch-ups have occured on bus trips from Dublin to my home town (4 hours). It can be interesting to catch up, but if there's nothing there, there's nothing there. Even of my past friends, I don't feel much inclination to get back in touch with people I've fallen out of touch with. The thought of doing so seems...weird, and rather disconcerting.
i can't really imagine my attitude changing too much in the future. I recall reading once that college-friendships tend to last far longer than other ones (or rather something like "the majority of 'life-long' friendships are formed in college...don't ask me for a reference though!). This seems to be holding true for me.
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« Last Edit: 19:10:01, 30-10-2008 by increpatio »
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richard barrett
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« Reply #16 on: 19:08:39, 30-10-2008 » |
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This is all (well, mostly) highly thought-provoking to me. As you say, strina, it's "better to know", I wasn't trying to say this was a major problem for me or that it was the main factor that keeps me away from Facebook (far more important is that I'd find it more involving than I have time for!). but to address (what I hope I'm right in thinking was) your original point, I'm not sure that relationships are necessarily "richer" through having gone on for longer, or for stretching back into childhood. Apart from family, I'm only in touch with one or two people I met before I was 20 or so. I don't really see that as a "tremendous loss". Though if I'm going to give in to curiosity and find out what's become of the others, I suppose I had better get on with it sooner rather than later! (Morbid is my middle name of course.)
It might be relevant to mention here that I think people from the US might be more prone to the kind of things you're describing than are those born on this side of the water, and that this is only partly due to moving around more and over larger distances. (I say this because what you say is similar to things I often heard from my previous partner, who was from California.) I think it also has to do with something about the way society is set up in the US as opposed to in Europe.
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Lord Byron
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« Reply #17 on: 19:09:43, 30-10-2008 » |
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I left facebook but got dragged back in, it is ok but I don't have all those mad vampire apps or poker playing stuff etc.
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Antheil
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« Reply #18 on: 19:16:28, 30-10-2008 » |
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What is interesting is people saying they felt themselves to be an "outsider"
Perhaps joining FR and FB is a wish to be an "insider" amongst your peers at long last?
Just a thought.
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Reality, sa molesworth 2, is so sordid it makes me shudder
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time_is_now
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« Reply #19 on: 19:18:27, 30-10-2008 » |
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I recall reading once that college-friendships tend to last far longer than other ones (or rather something like "the majority of 'life-long' friendships are formed in college...don't ask me for a reference though!).
I was about to say that those friendships have hardly lasted more for me than the ones from school, but actually it occurs to me that there's a distinction between my 'college' friendships (i.e. those who lived in the same accommodation or went to the same classes as me), which if they've lasted at all have done so only in the form of very occasional and superficial contact, and on the other hand two or three very close friendships I made with people from elsewhere in the university. They have indeed lasted, and are some of my closest friends (although I don't talk incredibly often to any of them). However, the majority of my friends these days are people I've met in the last 4 or 5 years. |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Lord Byron
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« Reply #20 on: 19:24:05, 30-10-2008 » |
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I was going to a local jazz club recently and noticed a friend on facebook who likes jazz had been working in london, so invited him to the jazz club visit, was cool to meet up again, so, it can work, also, you can easily create an event and invite all your friends or find out what is going on, case in point, a poet I know is having a photography show, and invited all her friends, so i was able to invite some friends who like photography. Doing that via email would have been a nightmare and would never have been done. so,yea,facebook works, and you can use it to organise real life meeting, which is good,but can be cold, in the winter, which is a good time to read books and stay in  |
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #21 on: 19:45:34, 30-10-2008 » |
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I made all of my best friends when I was in my mid-twenties or later. I'm only in touch with one old school friend, mainly because she persisted. We have only a few things in common now. I made one very good friend when I was over 50.
When my sons come back to the north they say of their old schoolmates who have never moved away that they know exactly what their lives are like, "but they can't begin to imagine ours".
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time_is_now
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« Reply #22 on: 19:53:30, 30-10-2008 » |
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When my sons come back to the north they say of their old schoolmates who have never moved away that they know exactly what their lives are like, "but they can't begin to imagine ours". Yes - that's exactly how I feel. To be honest, though, I feel the same about most of my old university friends too. I'm sure a large part of it is to do with being gay, and also to do with the professional circles I move in, but I find it very difficult to talk to them because their lives all seem so much more homely than mine. |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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thompson1780
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« Reply #23 on: 20:01:09, 30-10-2008 » |
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Strina,
Sorry if I missed the point earlier on. I may not have got it now, but I think what you're saying is 'What if....?'.
What if I had made Choice A instead of B? What if I hadn't got carried away with X and completely ignored Y? What if so and so hadn't done Q, thereby setting my fate to R?
And the Facebook thing is just that contact with your past has made those questions more alive, more real....?
I have "What if ?" questions going round my head loads. Many regrets. And then I try to remember that I wouldn't be me if it wasn't for all my experiences (good and bad). An ex-schoolchum on Facebook told me he other day he was running his own business, and he seemed to be doing very well. It immediately made me think "Oh shit, xxxx has done this and I've wasted the first 40 years of my life - and now its too late to make a name for myself / make a fortune / provide a very string foundation for future Thompsons". And then I just thought that I didn't really know what xxxx was like now. Maybe it's rubbish running his business, a real stress, especially now.
I think I try to tell myself more and more not to regret my past choices, but to use them. Usually as guidance for future decisions, but possibly as material I can do something with (if I'm writing). And I try to think of all the other possibilities too. For example, if I'd tried to set up my own business, it's very likely I would have failed (unlike xxxx), or I would not have learnt some of the skills you get from working in a bureaucracy / big company.
Best of all, just accept things as different. Try to divorce that from value and a view that one path is better than another. You can assess the value of your choices later, when you've seen and heard more of the person.
Cheers
Tommo
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Made by Thompson & son, at the Violin & c. the West end of St. Paul's Churchyard, LONDON
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Turfan Fragment
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« Reply #24 on: 21:41:47, 30-10-2008 » |
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[edit]Ooh look a pumpkin!
Happy Halloween all!
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« Last Edit: 05:43:22, 31-10-2008 by Turfan Fragment »
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...trj...
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« Reply #25 on: 10:56:32, 31-10-2008 » |
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It's a terrible intellectual cop-out, but whenever I worry about how my life might have been different 'if',* I ask if I'm relatively happy with how things are now - which I am - and decide that all those previous stages were needed to get me here. Platitudinous bullshit, I know, but I find it helps.
*My parents moved from Hertfordshire to north Cumbria at the end of my first year at University; as a result I lost a lot of contact with a close group of friends who I had grown up with. My university friendships were very intense, possibly as a substitution?, but after Uni I've drifted apart from many of those too, aside from those with musical connections. I'm pretty brutal when it comes to not maintaining contact with people.
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strinasacchi
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« Reply #26 on: 11:21:47, 31-10-2008 » |
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No it's not an intellectual cop-out trj - it's important to recognise where you are, how you got there, and how you feel about it. And it is true that all of our past experiences go towards making up who we are, I think. There's more to it than that, but I think we do absorb what's happened in our lives and make it part of ourselves.
I'm not unhappy with where I am and who I'm turning out to be, on the contrary - but there are some deep flaws. And I wonder if those flaws would have been there had I had a different path. Maybe - but then there would have been others no doubt.
One of those flaws is a tendency to focus on, and interpret everything, from a very egocentric point of view. One of the things that was upsetting me yesterday was how upset I was (a vicious cycle). I was so focussed on me, and on how this affected me, and on my past, when I should have been full of excitement to find out more about her. This was my first big friendship, I adored her and spent a great deal of time with her, and my initial reaction was all about myself. Not that I'm not curious and excited to hear more about the last 30-odd years of her life!
I'm pretty bad about maintaining contact myself. But in some ways maybe I'm worse than simply being bad - if I just never did it, that would be what people expect. As it is I lurch from one extreme to the other - years of nothing, followed by effusive apologies and lengthy catch-ups, then nothing again. I don't much like that about myself either.
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IgnorantRockFan
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« Reply #27 on: 11:30:33, 31-10-2008 » |
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I've never done the 'friends reunited' thing, and never wanted to (despite siblings trying to convince me to). When I left school for university, 25 years ago, I had no further contact with any of my school firends/acquaintances, except for two close friends who I still saw during vacations. As those vacations progressed, those reunions seemed more detached and unfulfilling. When I graduated and got full-time work in this part of the country, contact stopped completely. Apparently by mutual (unspoken) consent. Compare that with the friends I made during my student years: after 25 years I am in regular, weekly contact with all of the 'gang' except one who is separated by too much distance, and I still see the 'missing' one whenever life allows it. I think my point is that you don't 'lose' friends that are worth keeping. The ones who have fallen out of contact are those you probably didn't have enough in common with then, so how much less will you have now? Or maybe I'm just a social oddity... actually, I'm fairly sure I'm a social oddity  [Edit: but having read the rest of the thread, it seems I'm not alone in this  ] |
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« Last Edit: 11:35:45, 31-10-2008 by IgnorantRockFan »
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Allegro, ma non tanto
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Ruby2
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« Reply #28 on: 14:19:59, 31-10-2008 » |
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One of those flaws is a tendency to focus on, and interpret everything, from a very egocentric point of view. One of the things that was upsetting me yesterday was how upset I was (a vicious cycle). I was so focussed on me, and on how this affected me, and on my past, when I should have been full of excitement to find out more about her. This was my first big friendship, I adored her and spent a great deal of time with her, and my initial reaction was all about myself. Not that I'm not curious and excited to hear more about the last 30-odd years of her life! I doubt you're alone in that, Strina - in fact I know you're not, I'm often guilty of the same thing. I've tended to avoid catching up with many school friends because I just know I'd come out of the whole thing feeling inadequate or left out. You've only got to watch a handful of sitcoms to know that this is a pretty universal syndrome! I'm pretty bad about maintaining contact myself. But in some ways maybe I'm worse than simply being bad - if I just never did it, that would be what people expect. As it is I lurch from one extreme to the other - years of nothing, followed by effusive apologies and lengthy catch-ups, then nothing again. I don't much like that about myself either.
The thing that strikes me about your point here, and my own endless self-berating over lost contacts, is that each of us only has 24 hours in a day and most of those are spent working and sleeping. As we get older we make more acquaintances and friends, and those involved with your immediate life have to take priority over those who aren't. This all leads me to agree with this: I think my point is that you don't 'lose' friends that are worth keeping. The ones who have fallen out of contact are those you probably didn't have enough in common with then, so how much less will you have now?
...which is the only thing that stops me going insane over the whole issue. If we kept in regular touch with everyone we'd ever been friends with, we wouldn't have time to do anything else. I'm still in touch with one friend from school, but that's probably only because we have an ongoing silly game that we've been playing since GCSE maths lessons, and although we've always got on well, I've sure this is the reason we're still in touch even though she's in Wiltshire and I'm in Lincs. I went on Friends Reunited a few years ago and temporarily got back in touch with an old "best friend." I was immensely lacking in confidence at the time and she was quite a bully of a "friend." As soon as she e-mailed me she lapsed back into the same patronising tone that the 12-17 year old me used to put up with, but I rather quickly realised that she wasn't worth talking to any more and terminated our correspondence. One of those things that I think it's very difficult to keep at the forefront of your mind when considering this sort of thing is how other people's lives are so full of other people as well. You can think of yourself as a circle with contacts radiating out, and you can feel guilty for cutting one of those threads (or letting it fray or break a bit) but all those other people's lives are filled with thousands of other threads too. If I can't keep in touch with everyone then hey, they've got plenty else to do. |
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« Last Edit: 14:22:00, 31-10-2008 by Ruby2 »
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"Two wrongs don't make a right. But three rights do make a left." - Rohan Candappa
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Kittybriton
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« Reply #29 on: 14:31:22, 31-10-2008 » |
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Does it help to remember that "The goal is not the goal. The goal is how we approach the goal"?
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Click me -> About meor me -> my handmade storeNo, I'm not a complete idiot. I'm only a halfwit. In fact I'm actually a catfish. |
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