Some things simply shouldn’t be efficient. Like our friendships.
Pranav Jain made this point in a poignant piece titled The Quiet Grief of Adult Friendship.
Many of us live in a culture that prizes both efficiency and being busy. Unfortunately, as we try to squeeze the most we can into the little time we have, “friendship – the one relationship built almost entirely on voluntary presence – begins slipping through the cracks,” he wrote.
“The tragedy is that this loneliness often coexists with constant digital interaction. . . . We maintain ambient awareness of one another’s existence without participating meaningfully in each other’s lives.”
Texts, email, and social media seem to help us stay in touch more efficiently. What could be more time-effective than sending and receiving messages even when the other person isn’t available! You don’t have to be free at the same time!
On Facebook, you don’t even always have pick a specific person to talk to! You broadcast when you want, they read when they want. (Algorithms permitting.)
But something gets lost when we prioritize convenience over being present.
Friendships, Jain argues, depend partly on “A willingness to waste time together magnificently. To listen to the same anxiety for the fifth time. To sit through silence. To remain available without agenda.”
That’s hard to do on a screen.
But it can be easy to convince ourselves that we can, especially when we’re busy. And by the time we retire, at least some of us ✋ may have developed a few bad friendship habits.
So, I embarked on an experiment. If you’re a social extrovert, it probably doesn’t sound like much. But for an introvert, it was a bit of a challenge: For the last month or so, I tried to either call or see a friend in person every day. Not just text, or message on Facebook, or even email. But communicate in real time.
It could be as simple as chatting with a neighbor face to face, or as complex as a multi-day vacation. Phone calls counted, too. But the only real-time texting that could count was with my Deaf niece.
The change felt surprisingly good. Calling or getting together with someone was less efficient. But it was so much more of a connection!
The logistics weren’t always easy, though. If you’re at a conventional retirement age, you’re old enough to remember friendships before texting, email, and social media. However, calling is different now.
Years ago, people expected you to sometimes phone when you got the urge to chat. If they weren’t home, they wouldn’t hear the phone ring. No interruption if they were out to dinner! Now, it often feels like a bit of an intrusion to call someone without pre-arranging a time. And it feels like we’ve lost something when we can’t just “reach out and touch someone,” as the old Bell Telephone ad urged.
But there are ways around this. The easiest seems to be . . . just ask. “Do you enjoy ‘surprise’ phone calls that aren’t arranged in advance? Or would you rather I text first to see if you’re around” Same with friends who live close by. Do they like me asking about dropping by 15 minutes ahead of time, or do they prefer more warning?
Where does this experiment go from here? I don’t think “call a friend” should be another daily chore added to my to-do list. But I now have a new goal of less emailing, texting, and scrolling social media; and more real-time chats and visits with friends. Interaction quantity is likely to go down, but quality should go up. And that’s almost always a trade worth making.
You can follow My Next Chapter by email newsletter or RSS feed. Blog content © Sharon Machlis.