Never Let Go

It’s a little weird to not have as many close childhood friends, but on the plus side, I remember someone from my childhood every couple of months that I can always try to find on Facebook.

This is hoarding. This is a collection, a scrapbook of my life—of moments and times that, maybe I never got to connect with, but I can have a live and interactive continuation with now.

But is it really live? Do we really continue those relationships?

The thing that I had to learn in life was how to deal with loss, and that specific cycle of friendships. A lot of people are luckily enough to not have to go through this until their 20s or even 30s, but it can definitely be an emotional challenge. It’s almost like any other type of loss. Modern day social sites take that away, which is going to lead to some interesting outcomes for our generation, but what about the next generation?

They may never have to go through those same psychological and sociological processes. They can hoard and collect all throughout their life. They never have to let go. Is that healthy? Will that change the way we interact with our current friends, will it change the way we interact and make new ones?

Does having the always on ability to interact with someone take away the need to actually interact with them—and do we thus end up having less of those moments and connections?

MySpace became so popular not so much because it was a social network of people to keep in contact with, but because it was a digital expression of you as a person. Maybe things haven’t changed that much really, even if we treat them like they have. Deep down, subconsciously, Facebook acts as a digital record keeper and expression of our life. On the surface, we see it as a means of communication. That’s something that I think will need to be looked at a lot closer in the coming years.

Until then, I’ll keep holding on to some moments I never had with friends I never grew up.