Cowboy Caleb the liberal arts, grown-up stuff & random mischief

Facebook Friends Old And New

Recently, Facebook has gotten much better for me. As one of the early adopters, I found myself very lonely and isolated on it. Now that the rest of the world have picked up on it, I suddenly find myself receiving requests to be friends from folk from my days of yore, whom I though I had lost forever.

To be frank, not all of these long lost friends are entirely being welcomed with open arms. Memories of grudges or wrongs stir at the edge of my mind and skirt around the fringes of my former life(s). People whom I hardly knew or took the time to get close to as a teenager suddenly want to play ‘whatshisname’ with me. A bully and a braggart from my days as a youth in the churchyard suddenly wants to be my friend when he was anything but ever formerly - how am I supposed to react to that?

But it cuts both ways, because I found a dear dear friend - who didn’t seem as happy as I was at our reunion. I wonder how I had hurt him in the past to deserve this heartless behavior. I know I must have somehow, because I want to remember him the way he used to be - my dear good friend.

All in all, I see the pattern in the fabric of time that Facebook reveals to us. We’ve all grown older. We’re mostly married. Some of us have a kid or more. Most are successes. Nobody remained in their hometowns.

These friendships that form networks… they are so important and yet we do not realize it until the planets that are our friends fall out of orbit and reduce the sum of the total that we’re left all alone with to circle the center of our lives, until the end of our lives.

The question is.. do you approve the friend request from those you don’t welcome..? Or just click “ignore”?

u dont need frens like those if u know how to live with more ppl hating u. big deal

Joe > accept lah

naeboo> we can’t all be naeboo, my dear

it’s too hard being me. u cant last a day.

/whistles