The first.
No matter what the medium and how fast and new and convenient (add any number of other incentives), it seems that the onus of keeping communication alive can still remain as one-sided as it did in the day of snail mail. I suppose I should have learnt my lesson by now. But the eternal optimist in me (or perhaps, it is the love of writing in me?) persists. As a child, I took to the concept of 'Penpals' on Young Times (a supplement of Khaleej Times) instantly. Unfortunately, my pals' responses went from excited to tepid to none at all. My parents reasoned that clearly this was a lot of work to undertake for the sake of complete strangers. They had a point.
So, I tried again with best friends. As I had many opportunities to experiment with this variant of penpals, what with moving schools, apartments, cities and countries (with the last one, I was hopeful of adding to my other agenda of collecting stamps ;)), I figured this model was guaranteed a greater degree of success. I would studiously compile addresses before each move and set aside generous portions of my pocket money for stationery and stamps right after, and promptly send my friends a letter with my new address. Ironically, with this second model, the responses started directly from tepid and rapidly progressed to none at all. On occasion I would receive letters written by the respective mothers. Sigh.
As luck would have it, from time to time our worlds would collide again. And what had been painfully buried as a failed experiment would be dug out again, by a careless comment, such as "I used to love getting your letters. And then you moved." I would think to myself, at least they loved it. Oh well.
And then email arrived. I don't think I need to elaborate on the response rate with this new experiment. :)
The second.
Social networking sites have created a new layer of awareness. What was blissfully ignored is now dangled blatantly in your face. For instance, in years past, I could be completely unaware that a friend was in town at the same time as I was, but chose to call upon another/other friend/s forgetting me altogether. Now, I cannot. What's curious though, is a good number of these kind folks are the ones to have taken the initiative to search you up and add you as a 'friend' in the first place, leaving you with the challenge of trying to figure out if the person now sporting uber-starightened hair, a new-happily-married-last name, and an interesting online avatar is the same person you saw everyday in school a decade ago; posing the dilemma of whether or not to post birthday wishes on his/her wall; and the familiar response to your 'How are you? It's nice to connect after so long'.
Someday in the not so distant future, we might be able to surround ourselves with the virtual clones of everyone in our social network. I wonder what the communication experiment will result in then. A babel of noises? Or, perhaps, a shattering silence. Only time can tell. I do know that I will continue to write...and sing :)
4 comments:
young times and penpals! gosh! such a blast from the past :)
i totally empathize with your sentiments in this post :) although i too have been guilty of being the lazier correspondent at times. i dunno if this helps, but even when i have been the lazier correspondent, a letter from a friend (email, snail mail, wall post what-have-you) always makes my day considerably brighter. i.e., the lack of promptness in a response from me is not a measure of my indifference. it may be a measure of the state of clutter in my mind though.
and it's so true that while facebook helps you stay in better touch with people, it also makes you more acutely aware that you are not as close to some people as you imagine/wish to be. what it especially makes you aware of is the strengths of pair-wise friendships. and so you may be surprised (and your ego may be hurt) to discover that you are not as close to a person as he/she is to some other people whom you would have imagined to be at the same level in the closeness hierarchy as you :)
on the flip side though, it does make you aware of people who take a more active interest in your life than you would have imagined. and this can be heart-warming :)
you're right. :) this post painted things entirely black, not the grey that it really is. another friend and i had this conversation some years ago about how everybody expects to receive affection in the same fashion they are prone to expressing it themselves. that's probably the problem with written communication too. for instance, i suck at telephone conversations. god knows how many friends i have hurt by my utter inability to keep a phone chat going for more than 5 minutes. another lesson in patience, this.
And here I am waiting for your email, AA :). Waiting, waiting, ever waiting...
you are very patient, my dear. wait, no more :)
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