Postmodern Friendship

A dear friend of mine in the world is a woman in Italy who adopted a child from the same orphanage my son was in, now nearly 5 years ago. Her husband works for the US Embassy there--she's an American--and she has three adorable kids. We send Christmas boxes to each other through the APO--hers packed with Italian chocolates and cheeses (oh my god...) and wine; mine with whatever moves me that year: blueberry jam made right here in town, art supplies for her kids. Sometimes we go through stretches when we don't talk as much, and other times we've been in touch daily, obsessively. I wager that we know each other better than anyone in our families knows us. We've never met, and now we're afraid to; the stakes are too high--the friendship too important to risk jeopardizing. Imagine.

There are other friendships, too, that non-users would dismiss as Internet friendships. To me, though, they are as substantive as any friendship--and perhaps even more substantive because they don't get sidelined by superficial issues of appearance, or speech pattern, or physical mannerism. They get right to the heart of it: right past the screen to what we feel and think. How beautiful is that??

But there's a drawback to taking so much comfort in relationships that only exist through the computer. If you, like me, have always struggled with feelings of social awkwardness, well, now you don't have to struggle anymore. Which--the absence of struggle--is nice. But what happens when you just want to drink that Italian wine with a couple of friends--in your living room? Friendship--the old-style variety--it requires the struggle. It takes a leap of faith--acts of forgiveness, of compromise. It takes--and this is my big failure--willingness to invest time on another person's schedule--not just your own. Those are good things to get in the habit of doing, I know. The new-fangled kind skips right past all that stuff and gets right to the heart of it: this is who I am; are we alike? That's good, too. I think I'm just craving a little balance these days.

There was a sci-fi thing on the tube when I was a kid. Time travelers visited Earth in the future, and found the streets eerily empty--all communication occurring between people sitting in front of screens--pale, sun-starved creatures with bloodshot eyes. Funny, huh?