Friends

A former student posted something online this week about not having a best friend and always feeling like the extra in groups of friends.  Then the flurry of comments come.  "Let's hang out", "Call me and we'll get together", "I miss you",  "I'll be your best friend", blah blah blah.  I don't know if she smelled the bullshit, but it reeked by me.  I could have written that post any day of the past 35 years.  I smell the bs claims to want to hang out from a mile away.  It seems to be so much easier to make those claims as well when we have social media.

Here's the thing, if you are keeping in contact via social media by liking pics and posts, making the odd comment here and there, and you make no other effort, you are not reciprocating friendship.   After a suicide last school year, a friend of the kid was bothered that he didn't accept the offer to hang out with said person the last time he heard from him. Now he was dead.  This student then reframed the suicide as selfish.  Not exactly.  The selfish person was you, the person who just figured because you keep in minimal contact on social media, and you were too "busy" (bs excuse), that person would always be there.

Guess what...   The people you rely on or consider "friends" will not always be there.  Do not take their presence for granted.  An acquaintance from the club I go to just lost a kid he knew in a car accident.  So far this year, there have been suicides, drug overdoses, death due to illness, and accidents.  No one's presence here is guaranteed.  This girl's comment this week really hit home.  My father has great trouble making friends.  My mother has pushed away anyone she does not approve of.  He has no best friend, no one to talk to or confide in (I am the spitting image of him in way too many ways).  He finally made one a couple of years ago.  I was thrilled for him.  A few months ago, the man died suddenly in an accident.  I passed by the broken divider on the highway recently and all I could think of was the loss.  And the fact that while some of us end up friendless and it is out of our control, for most of you, it is within your control.

And I keep thinking about this girl's post.  Comments from a bunch of people who come around too late.  What if we just took the time to hang out and talk face-to-face once in a while?  What's so hard about accepting an invite to hang out (or extending one to those who have anxieties about initiating)?  I am tired of hearing or reading "Yeah, we'll hang out sometime" because sometime never comes.  It might not come due to laziness.  It might not come because of loss.  If you care about someone enough to use the word "friend" in connection with them, make time to see them (in the flesh, not snapchat or online crap), make the time to actually talk.  Because being in the presence of others and hearing their voices and being able to see and touch them is better than this online crap.  That's not friendship.  That's minimal effort.  If you are lucky enough to have people who want to be with you, take advantage of that.  We're all going to die, some sooner than others.