A Promise is a Promise

A friend is a friend

Nothing can change that.

Arguments, squabbles

Can't break the contract

That each of you makes

Till the death, to the end

To live your future

It's in the hand of your friend.

-A Friend is a Friend

Pete Townshend

Right after New Year's Day, 2019, while I was sitting at my kitchen table in the wee small hours of the morning, doing my usual couple of hours work from the quiet of home before heading into the office to continue my work day, I took a quick, simple, and incredibly effective step to eliminate unnecessary noise and bother from my life.  In less than three minutes, I deleted my Facebook account and my Twitter account.  

It is a decision I have never regretted.  Not once. 

Nowhere is Daniel Patrick Moynihan's maxim, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts" violated with the aplomb that it is on "social media", which has proven to be the Mother of All Oxymorons.  We live in a time when good, verifiable information from reputable sources is more readily available to us than at any time in the annals of human history.  Yet, we have become a nation of stone skippers - preferring to travel far and fast along the surface of any given subject rather than taking a deep dive into it.  We the people of follows and likes appear to prefer being noticed to...well, to anything else.  

I enjoyed Facebook for quite a while after I first joined because it served the purpose for me of allowing me to catch up with people whose names I knew and whose faces I recognized but with whom I had not had any direct interaction in close to - if not more than - three decades. Initially, the people with whom I connected/re-connected using Facebook and I did what I imagine we would have done had we all been in the same place, such as a reunion.  We showed each other photos of our spouses, pets, children, and (for the really lucky among our number), grandchildren.  We caught each other up on our after-high school and/or after-college life regarding how we earn our living, where we had settled and, on occasion, with whom from our shared past we had actually seen and to whom we had actually spoken, in the real world.  We would also share the occasional "Remember When?" story that brought up a good memory and, when necessary, share the sad news of a classmate or friend who had died.  

At some point, and I cannot remember when, the tenor and tone of conversations on my Facebook feed began to change.  Not the conversations in which I actively participated but, rather, ones to which I bore witness between two or more "friends". The more rancorous these exchanges became, the more I realized that the crack-like quality of Mr. Zuckerberg's deadly toy is not found in its algorithm.  

It is found in its verbiage.  

When you connect to another soul on Facebook, the two of you become "friends".  No one, other than perhaps Dr. Sheldon Cooper (and Stu the Cockatoo who is new at the zoo), reasonably believes making a friend is as simple as clicking a button. Mr. Zuckerberg and his minions are smart enough to know that if the button was named for what it actually does, far fewer people would sign up for the chance to "Reconnect with a person you have not seen, spoken to, or heard from since (a) high school; (b) college; (c) more than twenty-five years; or (d) all of the above and with whom you (e) were never friends; (f) have not had more than a fleeting thought since you last shared space with him/her; (g) would have nothing to say to one another, face-to-face, beyond "How's it been going?"; or (h) all of the above."  Those of us who live our lives outside of the glare of the spotlight (politicians, performers, and athletes leap to mind) do not crave the attention of, or strive to keep company with, strangers.  But friends? Well, that is a whole different kettle of fish.  

For me, I realized the train had jumped the tracks when in spite of the fact that I have more fingers and toes than I do friends "IRL" (an acronym I only discovered about two years ago means "In Real Life" and not "Indy Racing League"), on Facebook I had more than four hundred.  In truth, the overwhelming majority of that number are good people to whom I wish nothing but good fortune but who also happen to be nothing more or less than an acquaintance of mine, which is all I am of theirs.  It is a perfectly utilitarian relationship but is not friendship.   As I suspected would be the case when I deleted my Facebook account, the people with whom I was/am friends with in my day-to-day world are those with whom I remain in contact now.  We might have less frequent interaction than we did when we popped up in one another's "News Feed" but there is not a damn thing wrong with that level of interaction.  

Friendship is not - and should not - be measured by frequency of interaction but rather by the depth, the breadth, and the substance of that interaction. Among my greatest friends are my "Band of Brothers" from college, in whose company I have been rarely - if at all - in the thirty-plus years since we all graduated but who remain among those humans who know they could rely upon me for any ask, regardless of its size, and who I know would do the same damn thing for me in a heartbeat.  I know because each of us has for at least one of the other of us. 

Those are the relationships that - if you are lucky enough to have - you must be willing to work to cultivate and to maintain.  Long after the computer has been turned off or the app on your phone has been closed, those are the friends who remain.  

-AK