Last week, after so many years I met one of my old school friends. It was almost 15 years we have not seen each other. It was not like we did not know anything about us in last years and we were actually connected with each other on social media website . We were ‘liking’ each other’s status updates and making appreciating comments on every photo upload. Sometimes we even managed to have a casual chat over phone for around 10-15 minutes. But that was all we were doing to stay in touch. Usually our discussion used to end with a common thought that we cannot meet and have more fun time as we used to have in our school days because of the distance; otherwise there is no point of not believing that we are not jigree friends. At least that’s what our likes and comments have to say.
May be god was genuinely interested in what we used to agree on a common thought and by chance we shifted to the same city because of certain developments in career of both of us. We exchanged the great news, again thanks to social media website only. The website not only helped us to pronounce the breaking news but also helped us to decide about a meeting place in a new city. Both of us were excited and happy on the fact that we are going to have an existing friend in a new city and we need not to worry on making new friends too fast.
We met on a decided day and time. We shook our hands with super enthusiasm and genuine smile on face. We hugged each other while seemingly eager to say a lot all together. Initial 30 minutes were passed on discussing about our school days and then our individual career challenges and achievements.
Story took a turn after 30 minutes. Our discussion was going deep down and we started to share what bothers us, what are the ideas that makes upset us individually. We should live the life a particular way. One was defending to accumulating the wealth and other was to knowledge. I am not sure who was right or wrong because both of us were full of arguments in favour of our own principles but gradually we started feeling that we were not on a common ground. We were actually not agreeing with each other. We, actually, disliked each other’s thoughts status update. Unlike the social media website which only have a button to like, thought rankled both of us were looking very badly to register our disliking. That’s the life. We need buttons to register our disliking. That was certainly something we did not expect to happen. Our excitement started diminishing speedily. Till last we could not manage to have a way to turn ourselves from a disliking friend to a liking one. And at the end, we anyhow managed to shake our hands, off course minus the initial excitement to take each other’s leave.
It was a sad episode. I was returning emotionally drenched. Someone did not like me, specially the one whom I not expected that way. I am sure same was the feeling with my friend also. But the only problem was that we were not discussing it over virtual messenger and it was a real time meeting. The Idea stuck to my mind. I started to think that what we achieve virtually is actually have no connotation on real ground. So do these likes and comments actually help us to grow individually? Do these offer us an environment to learn handling rejections? How different it’s from the reality. By drawing inferences from the above narrative and social media website features I concluded to a list which actually all of us need to focus on.
- First and a must- We need friends in our life. There is no escape to this.
- Try to make and have friends in real world also. May be lesser count on friend list than social media website but we must have real world friends.
- And the big learning from the social media website for the real world; If you want to be liked and appreciated, learn to say ‘like’ even if you don’t. Just for the sake of your friendship.
- Good words are not meant only for virtual world. Appreciate others strength and achievements in real life also.
- You have a very strong bond with real time friend than your virtual friends, because a relationship is not just a bouquet of likes but it matures with a combination of likes and dislikes both. You can rely on your real time friends in your tough times. They offer you a sense of belongingness.
- Real world helps us to handle rejections for our thoughts and challenges offered by different personalities and help us to learn how to get accustomed to varied personalities and thus making us mentally strong.
The purpose of writing this is not at all to undermine the importance of online social networking. We cannot afford to stay out of online social community but it’s something that we should be well connected to the real world also.
