Friendship Part 2

Sometimes I become very disappointed by the way it has all turned out. In a crowded dinning room recently, I noticed first the low volume then I realized why. There were people in groups of twos and threes at individual tables. It seemed like nearly everybody was engaged with their personal device. Nobody spoke, at least not to the heartbeat with whom they shared a table.

This is not a new conundrum. It's been slowly invading our public places for years. I remember the rowdy coffeehouses of my youth where everyone seemed hopped up on caffeine and nicotine and we spoke about all those things you'd imagine to hear. There was fierce political thought. There was anecdotes, there were card games. There was always this allure of love or at least sex. In those days, at the danger of sounding like a sentimental old man, we made fun of the one guy in the corner looking into a computer screen. We made fun of the guy looking into the computer screen and looking into a screen is what I am doing now. In the halcyon days before technology made us instantly connected and instantly compartmentalized, we made fun of anyone who wasn't doing what we were doing: drinking coffee and talking loudly about nothing and everything.

Loud talkers are not nearly as commonplace anymore, not to my attention anyway. Rather, what I see now, is the one guy in the corner who hasn't got a computer or a phone or whatever at the end of his nose. He doesn't get made fun of, no, no one seems to pay him any attention.

But I wonder, in the coffeehouses, if people still have the need for the animated conversations: those conversations that are nothing and everything, the fierce political thought and the allure of sex. Do these conversations still take place at the coffeehouses? Are these conversations happening now through virtual friends with the aid of the digital middleman? Are we the same as we ever were but not have need for electronics in order to communicate? If this is the case, what was wrong with the people sitting at tables on either side of us?

Are people still having conversations fueled by furious social and political thought but on small screens remotely to others with small screens? Be that as it may, seems pretty sad to me.

It takes me to the Book of Ecclesiastes where we are urged to have a companion, someone to help thwart assailants and keep us warm at night. Do the friends and followers have the capacity to come from a screen in the night and protect us from the boogie men of the dark? Or are the boogie men themselves too busy to cause any real harm because they too are staring, slack jawed into a screen?

The only real disappointment in the busy dining room was not so much that everyone seemed to looking into a screen, but that they were all sitting in groups of twos and threes. It seemed to me that there was no real connection. There was no connection at all. I do not know if this is commonplace everywhere, or just one this given night in this given place when I was loath to notice it.

I do think that it is commonplace. I feel like those connections we so badly need, whether it is the acquaintance or the friend or the good friend or the best friend lack for most. We can make the casual statement that we are too busy anymore for such things. We can make the argument that people just don't have the time for it. But that cannot be true. How can anyone not get a friend because they are too busy or don't have the time. With friends, we will live longer lives and with longer lives we will have ample time to build more friendships.

I know that statement is faulty. I don't know why people aren't making more meaningful connections. Maybe they are. What I have noticed in recent years is far stranger than anything I could possibly illustrate here. One thing that strikes me as odd is the rise of the dog. Sure, dog is man's best friend, and I think that is more true now that ever. I feel like the people who are really into dogs or their dogs particularly have a very deep bond. I suspect that deep bond comes from the fact that these people have not had a meaningful relationship with anything or anybody. At least a dog has a heartbeat.

The Physics of Happiness.

By Albert Camus

Life in the open air.

Love for another being.

Freedom from ambition.

Creation.

Although not overtly about the subject of friendship, Camus has the nuance of “love of another being” as part of his concise and short The Physics of Happiness. I think anything that is another living being would qualify here. I believe if we were trapped away from all other living life on Earth accept something small, say like a fly or a spider, we would have more in common with it suddenly than if we had nothing at all. Could we be friends with a fly or a spider? Depends on how lonely we become, I suppose.

Back to the screens in the busy dining room. It affects me negatively, because I fear that friendships become cheapened or devalued to a point where we have no control over those who we surround ourselves. We no longer have the capability to meet and make a friend, the time it takes to nurture a friend or the energy it takes in investment.