Online Friends
I was reading a post last week by a person I consider an online friend and comrade, Becky Robinson, and was struck by two questions. “What makes a friend?” and “What is friendship worth?” She was writing about another person that we both have contact with, Dan Rockwell. Dan is also an online friend, and reached out to help me when I was struggling with an organizational issue. I have not met either of these people in real life (IRL), nor face to face (F2F), but we are truly connected.
Social Media (SoMe) has made it possible to connect with people at great distances and at various stations in life, but who are of similar mindset and heart-set.
Best Friends
One of my best and dearest friends is someone I met in Junior High School. We were nerds and geeks together long before it became fashionable. We traversed the halls of Jr. and Sr. High School together. When we left home for college, we went our separate ways. And for almost 40 years, the tiniest things would make me think of “O”, and smile. A certain style of braid, a certain piece of Rachmaninoff, a certain Ukrainian or eastern European phrase, a news story about NASA, and my occasional trips home, even though she is she was no longer living there.
Through the wonders of technology, I finally tracked her down about 2 years ago, and visited her home and met her family.
We talked and laughed as if we had just seen each other in class that afternoon. Our bond is set in the cement of love. Neither time nor distance is any real match for friendship and love.
There are people online who I have never met and most of them I will never meet IRL. But they have become some of my closest and dearest friends, nonetheless. We are connected by invisible and almost unbreakable bonds. Just like the bond that ties me to “O”.
What makes a friend a friend?
“A friend is someone who takes up residence in
our hearts and in our minds.”
~ Martina
Is there someone you should be looking up?
photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/88438917@N00/355460614/
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