I enjoy some of the friend-making at facebook and link-in. Mainly to see just how many people want to be writers and what they choose to write. Sometimes for the fleeting glory of being commended. All this getting connected around the world has rapidly become just another way of selling ourselves to each other. I shouldn’t complain, that is the reason I joined in with the social networking.
But the deep connections I have made with human beings in my life have little to do with shared interests. Since I was nineteen my two closest friends I met at University. One of them sadly died in 2004 and he and I did share ideals, but my other friend, now a mother of two, is someone that I just get on very well with. Whose company has never produced the slightest angst.
My closest friend here where I live is a builder by trade, he is also a fine man and a wonderful father. He is another person that despite any differences we get on very well on a human level. He loves fast cars, flying and all kinds of things I don’t find relevant but they don’t matter, it isn’t the cars I go to have dinner with.
And that’s what I have begun to look for in social networking sites. People who speak, who write, from their hearts because it is their humanity that is the connection between us.