Thoughts Concerning Connecting with Friends

Friends!

In our last issue Adriana our European Editor wrote about connecting with friends close to home and far away. It was surprising to me to realize that I have a better communication with friends far away than close to home.

Her letter inspired me to give you my feedback and take this opportunity to follow up on her letter with my thoughts.

As for all of us, life has become very busy and getting together with friends becomes more and more difficult and turns into a challenge to coordinate all of our schedules to make it happen, just to meet up for coffee.

To find out how much of a challenge it would be to meet with my friends here locally in Chicago, I had to test it and made my efforts to call each one! Keep in mind, NO emails for this specific experience!

Since I don't want to use names and go into much detail, I'll just give you my overall feedback.

OK, so I called 5 friends and left messages with the request to meet for coffee (keep in mind no dinner, just coffee). I got two calls back in a time frame of 24 hours and 3 emails with a kind but friendly response that they are too busy at the moment and not able to meet up. However to call or email them again in about 2 weeks to see if their schedule allows them to find time to meet! (Wow, we have to plan that far ahead of time just to meet for coffee! This is ridiculous...)

The two who called left nice voice messages to call or email them and we have to see if we can work it out in the next week. (Lovely, at least we are not that far away from a coffee klatsch). So it looks like nobody was eager to meet up because each one is too busy and we have to schedule way ahead of time. So much for "miss you, love to see you, let's get together".

Now really, how many times do we say that and do we really mean it?

Or is it just a nice way of just staying connected but not interested in meeting, except it is important either for a job or funeral? OK, perhaps a wedding counts too.

In these days of technology, I realize that I found more friends all around the world than in my own neighborhood. I communicate and talk about my life on Facebook and Twitter, but can't do it with my close friends who live a stone throw away.

Thank God for Facebook and Twitter at least that way we can keep up with our lives, since we can't meet in person and keep you all posted about my life at least virtually.

We have so much to say on these social sites, but how much do we share once we meet? Five minutes into the conversation comes the statement "oops I got to run, I am already late. Let's get together soon and catch up."

Not sure when that will be, I guess I will go on facebook and let my friends know what is happening in my life and what is bothering me. At least when we meet again, I don't have to waste their time to fill them in on what's bugging me or what is going on. Saves time to catch up for 5 minutes and we can run off again and try again to meet to catch up on our lives!

Beatrice Davis
Editor in Chief