John Lacey

I read a blog entry last night from someone. Actually, I will call them a friend. I don’t know if they would consider me as such. For the purposes of this entry I am not sure it matters. Suffice it to say I have a good deal of affection for them and have since we met for the first time in November last year.

Their thoughts eerily echoed ones I had been carrying around with me for a long time. What exactly constitutes a “friend”?

I guess I realised at an early age that I was quite unlike anyone around me, growing up. For a long time I struggled to reconcile this fact. Eventually, though, I managed to stop banging my head against the writing on the proverbial wall. Instead I just learned to enjoy my own company, and quietly explored my own interests.

Technology has changed so many aspects of daily life. When I started high school the only people I would really communicate with were people within my own town. Now within minutes of waking up I find myself catching up with people in America, Argentina, Canada, Britain, Scotland. Suddenly I have an opportunity to connect with people on the basis of shared interests rather than common geography.

Yet, still, wherever you go online people uneasily contrast between their online friends and their “real” friends. There was a time I found this differentiation offensive. As if it somehow implied the online friends were “unreal”, or fake, friends. The truth, however, is that people feel a great need to try and explain the different kinds of interaction they have.

I guess the dilemma is one that wouldn’t have even existed fifty years ago.

Of the people I consider my closest friends, sometimes we communicate every day and at other times it can be weeks and weeks without any contact. I realise they have other friends (of both variants). There are times I miss them terribly, but I try to remain mindful that I don’t want to monopolise their time or come across too needy.

The other day many of my high school friends were made aware of what I like to call the JohnOfJordan Empire. You could be forgiven for thinking these people are my “real” friends. But I pause for a moment to consider the implication. The JohnOfJordan enterprise is something that has taken up a lot of time, energy, and money (domain registration, hosting, cameras, software) over the last year. Yet they’ve only found out about it now. Infact without the recent mainstream popularity of Facebook it seems quite likely that we wouldn’t be in contact at all. Something to ponder, I suppose.

Your friends are the people you love, irrespective of where you find them or how you interact with them. I am fairly notorious for wearing my heart on my sleeve and I guess this instance will be no exception. I really don’t feel as though you should doubt the legitimacy of these relationships. It might be tempting to sit back and see if people contact you, and then make whatever judgments you care to. However sometimes it might be ultimately more rewarding to reach out and express how you feel.

Oh and in case you were wondering… the photograph that accompanies this entry was taken with some very unusual friends at Taronga Zoo in Sydney. [Thanks to my friend Jasmina who, despite living only about an hour from where I lived, I met via a Tori Amos mailing list. Makes you think, doesn't it?]

Categories: Personal Universe
Tags: features