I find that once you turn a certain age, it gets harder and harder to make new friends. The opportunities to make new friends become few and far between. The natural development of a friendship is somehow challenged and undermined by other more pressing responsibilities that often times causes the development of most friendships to be based on necessity as opposed to sincerity. I think in these critical times we now live in, the concept and nature of friendship is shifting from a more emotional framework to that of a logical and goal-oriented framework. We now look for functional friends that can do something for us as opposed to emotional friends who can accent our redeeming qualities.
I think the reason for this difficulty rests in a variety of explanations. For one we are “The New Silent Generation”. Given the advent of new and improved ways to communicate, we are no longer connecting in ways that foster true friendship. We are not meeting as much, spending quality time with one another or talking on the telephone. In fact, we don’t even call it a “telephone” anymore. Now it is called a cell phone, short for cellular phone. It has become the nuts and bolts of our communication structure. We carry our lives inordinately on our cell phones and to lose it or have it conk out on us is the equivalent of a death. And when our devices die, we tend to suffer the same grieving process and feelings of loss that we would if an actual loved one passed away. It’s sad how we have traded in genuine love and emotions for computerized feelings and technical attachments. I see more people hooked up to more and more devices than ever before. It is like we are now half human-half machine and this is not conducive to making and maintaining new and preexisting friendships. We don’t see ourselves as human beings anymore which causes us to treat each other as less than human. Also a common complaint among most people in relationships (be it romantic or platonic) is feelings of isolation and loneliness as a result of cell phone dependence. These days we have to compete with machines for our most basic need for love, support and attention and the idea of giving someone your undivided attention is considered an outdated method of interaction that is no longer operational.
I-phones, selfies and facebook all have contributed to the gross narcissism that characterize our day and times. These technologies while useful and beneficial to communication, also threaten to extinctualize our friendships as it takes a certain level of selflessness to be a true friend. In an effort to love ourselves, we have alienated everyone else and while we all claim to want a friend, we ourselves are not friends. We are just scared people peeking out from emotional peepholes hoping to come across what we are looking for through serendipitous happenstance. We test out the water on such apps as Bitstrips where we include people into our virtual world hoping to ultimately bring them into our real world. I guess the logic is if they can tolerate our gravatars, they can tolerate us.
Also as previously mentioned in the opening paragraph, opportunities to make new and exciting friendships are few and far between as we are now in a frenzied rush to keep up with not only the Joneses but also with the onslaught of new information that we receive which is crucial to our very survival. Our resistance and motivation to revolt, rise up and challenge the establishment is buried under mountains of paperwork. We are just plumb tuckered out! Also when we were growing up, a new friend was right around the corner as there was school, summer camp, a variety of programs that promoted socialization, proms, parties, clubs, fraternities, sororities and also that youthful feeling that you had plenty of time. But when you get older, you begin to feel like time is like an absentee parent- it keeps running out. You no longer feel as though you can let friendships happen naturally. You have to somehow influence them and speed them up before it’s too late and you have to settle into your life as a lonely spinster or decrepit old geezer. So you give friendships a nudge which in turn gives the appearance of desperation which is friendship repellant.
Psychologist Erik Erickson posited a series of developmental stages one must achieve in order to be considered a healthy-functioning adult. If those stages are not negotiated properly, that is when various psychological disorders manifest themselves. The stage that I currently find myself at is the Isolation vs. Intimacy stage which is accurate as there currently tends to be this pendulum swing between the two that makes it hard to negotiate this particular stage effectively. On one hand I want genuine intimacy with other people but on the other, this day and age implicitly fosters a sense of isolation with its aloof and distant technologies that promote individualistic ideals as opposed to interdependent realities. Sometimes you think you have the friend thing nailed down and then you are thrust back into an awful state of confusion as what you thought you had down pat was actually a moment, soon to become another moment.
This is why I have alot of so-called friends or friends-in-the-moment. They are the equivalent of a buddy, a comrad, a homie, a leaf fluttering in the wind but they are not “soul-friends”. I am looking for soul friends. Those who you know will be in your life no matter how crazy or jacked up you are, no matter how neurotic you are, they just know that regardless of all the changes you may go through, your heart always looks and feels the same every time. There might be seasons in your temperament but the seasons of your heart never change. It is always summertime when they are there. I want that unspoken understanding that defies the occasional disagreement or hurt feeling. That is when you know you have something good. When you can recover from a minor to major spat and come back stronger than ever before, you know that you have found a soul friend.
Technology and the times in which we live have grossly contributed to a famine of viable friendships that can be made and enjoyed among people today. But there is hope. It just rests in the willingness to assess your current connections and explore new friendships with people who share your desire for meaningful connections. It also rests in being active and being your own friend. When you take part in activities that mean something to you and that matter to you, you find more people who are going your way. And that is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Luis Speaks 