A Sister's Birthday and Musings on Social Media

The house is blessedly quiet (save for my husband’s snores from the couch) after a raucous, activity-filled day that started at 6:30 this morning.

We hosted my middle sister’s 31st birthday celebration this afternoon. And while I love spending time with my family (roll call this afternoon included my parents and 3 of my 4 sisters, their significant others, my Husband and my daughter), I always find myself over stimulated and a little stressed with the effort of trying to be the consummate perfect hostess. Thus, as the troops departed to see a late movie and my daughter joined them, I exhaled a quiet sigh as I wiped down the kitchen counters one last time.

I decided to post a picture of my birthday-celebrating sister on Facebook when I logged onto my computer to do a little writing this evening. Getting onto Facebook is a rarer occurrence for me these days ever since a wise and trusted advisor counseled me on the addictive and creativity-sucking nature of Facebook and Social Media in general. Now, I hop into that time warp medium every several days to post a picture or respond to a message rather than hourly to read acquaintances’ incessant Farmville updates.

When I logged on, I was greeted with a friend request from someone that I was friends with in 5th Grade through High School. While I had not spoken to her since the last day of Senior Year, I was happy to hear from her and to see that she was doing well with a beautiful family. I wrote her a quick note to tell her as much.

I thought about Taylor and telling her that I had reconnected with a friend that I knew from an age even younger than she is now. Just contemplating that blew me away. ..Taylor is meeting people and making friends that she will know or remember, when she is 40 years old.

Then my mind wandered even further. And I started to wonder…will she ever “lose touch” with someone? When everyone of my daughter’s generation has a My Space, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter account, ‘Auld Lang Syne’ may no longer have a literal meaning.

Likely, my daughter will never have to search for someone that she was once close with – they will never have stopped being ‘e-friends’ or ‘connected’ or ‘linked’ or whatever the future vernacular may be. Tay will probably never be surprised by the sender when opening an Inbox or Mailbox, or a snail mail letter for that matter…because everyone she has knows or has ever known will be electronically linked to her in some way or another.

I am conflicted as to if this is a good or bad thing. I do love hearing from old friends, about the paths that their lives have taken and take great satisfaction that our once-upon-a-childhood-friendship made enough of a lasting impact that they remembered me and wanted to reach out. Conversely, I have actively stayed friends with only a handful of people since my childhood and through adulthood. My private club, while not unwelcoming..is exclusive. You must pay your dues to get in. With all of the busyness of my life and my family’s, I feel like I do not have the extra bandwidth to be a good friend to many more people.

I read an article recently about the Facebook phenomenon by a psychologist who wrote that the human brain maxes out at about 150 friends. Yet, many Facebook users count far many more than that as their “friends.” I think again of Taylor, and how she will define friendship and relationships as she transitions into High School, then College and into adulthood.

This whole line of thinking then lead me to remember a quote that was used by a man that I dated several years ago. Okay, so it was on his search engine profile page (an early form of Social Media) – and he and I are no longer in touch. (Obviously, he and I were the second out of the three options below.) But, the sentiment still resonates.

“People come into your life in 3 ways; for a reason, for a season or for a lifetime.”