A
female
age
36-40,
Elora
writes:I have just joined Facebook and can't help but be a little overwhelmed. It's hard to appreciate just how small the world is unless suddenly it's in the context of people you’ve met in it! My sense of the world is built around all the people who have touched my life in some way. Some are in your life forever, some lose touch with you, some are only there for a day or even a matter of hours. Nevertheless, all of them have affected me and have helped shape who I am today. And now suddenly, in a matter of seconds, I can see people that I lost touch with months, years or even a decade ago. It's wonderful and frightening.I think we all run away from things in our past to some extent. There are friendships that get broken, decisions and changes that affect them and the general tendency we have to drift away from those distant from us. Perhaps everyone burns some bridges along their way, or at least forgets that they once crossed them! Yet no matter what the story between you and a particular person may be, they're now here and can be reached with a few simple clicks. It’s quite daunting and makes me wonder about people that aren’t in my life anymore for one reason or another. Not only are they there to be reached, they are visible. You can see their pictures and read about their current lives. You can see how different (or not) they look to the last time you saw them. Depending on their privacy level, they may not even know you're doing it. In a way it's comforting. Sometimes I do wonder if there are wrongs you can’t ever put right with a person. I’d like to think that there’s always the hope of mending a relationship with someone even if there’s been a lot of damage to it, but often I think maybe some things can never be fixed even if you both still care. Even so, if they’re online you can now look at the profile of someone you hurt in the past, have the comfort of seeing that they're happy and they never need to know. You never have to face being vulnerable enough to make an apology that will almost certainly be rejected. Whether we should try and make that apology anyway is another story. I think the answer is almost definitely yes; if you care so much about them it's worth the risk. The reality is few of us would be brave enough. I know I have never been that brave.At the same time, it presents so many opportunities. Friends you simply drifted apart from because of distance are suddenly easy to reach. They can be part of your life again and it's amazing. People from primary school are suddenly as easy to find as your current friends. People you have just met don’t have to disappear, you can stay in contact easily.Does it upset the balance? My friendships are complex. Certain friends get on well together whereas others wouldn't fit well in that particular social group. It's something you know through appreciating the quirks and unique personalities of each person. More than that, I'm sure I'm not the only one who acts differently with different people; not by making a conscious decision but simply through different people bringing out different aspects of your own personality. It's one of the great things about having a variety of people in your life; they help you learn more about yourself. One of the things I've learnt over time is that keeping a good balance and appreciating the unique personality traits of each individual isn't easy, particularly if you want to bring different groups together. Here, all of a sudden, all of your friends are in one place. Whether you would have chosen it or not, they are all presented with the same image of yourself and can even read your communication with each of them. Maybe it’s a good thing. It certainly makes me want to be more honest with everyone, and appreciate that I should think carefully about what I say to people! It’s hard to tell those little white lies when a status update or wall post could give the game away! Maybe we lose a bit of the individual attention each friend would usually get and perhaps certain friends view us interacting with others in a way we wouldn't normally communicate with them. It exposes sides of your personality that friends may not otherwise see. But is that necessarily bad? I honestly don’t know, and I suspect it depends how liberal you’ve been when adding people to your friends list!I suppose there are two options: be very careful and restrained in what you publish online, or be very honest and allow all your friends to see all sides of your personality. One makes me feel quite guarded, one makes me feel very vulnerable. But perhaps the second option would be interesting to try. It all depends on how much of a front you like to put up for people and how much you care what others think. If I'm honest, I know I do put on a front a lot of the time but I have to admit I’m getting more tired of it as I get older and really appreciate how much real friendships mean to me and the trust that comes with them.It's difficult to answer, but perhaps the second option will make it easier when I next bump into an unexpected familiar face in the supermarket! Maybe it's time to make those awkward apologies and try to mend relationships that were long broken.Or I could set my profile to extra private.
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male
reader, Brae123  +, writes (16 September 2008):
I lost intrest after the 3rd paragraph. 1000 words is way to much for people to sit and read.
A
reader, anonymous, writes (11 September 2008): srry i dont like to read maybe that why ur not getting answers but ill be sure to go and chek it later tonight so i can read it
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