Old Friend

Just yesterday I heard from an old friend I'd lost touch with. (He had only my outdated e-mail address, and the contact form on my web site is woefully inoperative at the moment, but he was able to find me through Google.) He mentioned at first he had been trying to find me through Facebook (without success), but in the process came across several mutual friends who haven't been heard from in ages. I can't help but be a bit curious to know what's become of people I was close to, so long ago.

But I've never had the least bit of interest in Facebook, or MySpace, or any of that. If you knew me well, I suppose that might come as a surprise — I'm just as likely to have good friends at a distance as close by. But the "social networking" phenomenon has never had any appeal to me — in fact, I've stubbornly resisted it. (And if you knew me well, that would come as no surprise at all.) It's always struck me as little more than an exercise in filling an address book with the names of different people you know, or used to know, like a birdwatcher that accumulates a list of the different birds they've spotted. It all seems so shallow, so impersonal.

I want more from my friendships than that. I want depth and intimacy. I want laughter, even tears. I want truth. I want to listen to people, to hear their voices as they tell their stories (even if those voices are only heard in what they write). Anything less hardly seems worthwhile.