Where do you belong?

Being apart of a group; the feeling of belonging is a very vital and basic human need in order to live healthy, and balanced lives.  Earlier this year my English 11 students and I embarked on a journey to explore the aspect of belonging and how it related to human beings.  What we learned was outstanding.  We discovered that a person needs to belong on some level in order to live a happy life; loneliness can be dangerous and life threatening; social media, thought to bring people together, can actually give one a sense of false friendship, and can lead to loneliness and depression; and finally to find satisfaction in friendships one must have face-to-face time or at the very least phone conversations, in order to achieve a true connection with another person- a confidant.  A digital friendships maybe convenient but they aren't as fulfilling as the real thing.

These lessons were not so shocking to me, as I have struggled with the theme of belonging and friendship for years.  I know that friendships are tricky to maintain in your adult life and require effort on both sides for it to work.  Think about it.  As a kid we have instant friendships through pre-arranged play dates and countless hours at school, where you have a sea of other kids to choose from to become friends with.  Considering you spend most of your day with your classmates you can easily maintain a friendship.  But once we enter the adult world we busy ourselves with careers, and finding a mate, so the time dedicated to seeing friends becomes less.  We end up whittling our pool of friends down to a few close bonds.  Add marriage and children to the mix and the close friends you once saw weekly, and told your secrets to, have become mere Facebook friends in a digital world.  Now if you are lucky your BFF and you have journeyed down the same life path, so you still have common interests and it might be easy to see one another and maintain a close bond.  This type of bond is the key to a friendship and the way to nurture it is by spending time together.  But far too often we take the easy way out and think the easy digital world is just as effective in keeping friendships alive.  Just a few clicks and you are on FB where you can creep into one anothers lives and in a matter of minutes know the status updates of dozens of friends.  But at the end of the day do you feel connected to these people?  Probably not.  As you yourself post only the 'best version' of your life online, so do others, so we don't really know one another.  Could you call these people and have a real conversation about how you are really feeling?  If you stick to just quick posts and status updates as a means to connect you will find yourself feeling the opposite, disconnected and lonely.

I, for one, am not a stranger to feeling disconnected from women who I once considered my close friends.  For years we'd spend a least twice a month getting together and catching up over food and wine.  We'd confess secrets and ask advice, like most close female friends do.  We were like the characters from Sex and The City, but without the high fashion.

Then slowly my group that I belonged to only saw one another every second month to the point where we sort of lost contact.  Our lives became too busy to see each other.  One friend of mine in particular moved away without telling me.  I wouldn't have found out unless I hadn't called her in the summer to arrange a lunch date with her.  Instead I discovered she moved to another city.  At first I was deeply hurt and confused about why she hadn't told me.  We used to be so close.  I knew more about her and she me than numerous of other people did.  When the hurt subsided I realized that over the last two years we had drifted a part.  Between her having her first child and me focusing on a new marriage we didn't make the effort to call one another, and we didn't see each other very often.  Both of us were to blame.  I soon realized that the group I once called "my close few" were all scattered like dried leaves in the wind.  Our lives didn't connect any more because we all led such different lives.  And its no one person's fault.  And though I still consider them friends, as we never had fights to dissolve our relationships, I don't feel as though I belong with them as my confidants.

It's hard to maintain friendships without similar interests and experiences.  I'm not saying you can't; I'm saying it is hard.  My best friend lives in another city and she is a mom, but we still make the effort to call one another.  I know I can talk to her over the phone and still feel the strong connection that we have always had.  I also have a new circle of friends that I feel I belong to, and the reason is simply because we spend time together outside of the digital world.  There is nothing more satisfying than to have a person next to you and see them actually listening to you and caring about what you have to say.  Even a phone call can give texture to a friendship.  I'm lucky to have these women in my life.

Furthermore, digital friendships are hollow and can be very one sided.  There is nothing worse than when you want to connect to another person but they don't make the effort to reciprocate back.  A strong friendship is a two way street, where both people put in the time and effort.  I'm tired of those interactions where I make all the effort to plan a night out or just go for a cup of coffee, and all I get in return are text messages and FB posts on my status updates.  It's not a friendship.

I've learned that it isn't the number of friends on FB you have but the number of actual moments with just a few people that truly matter.  I challenge you to pick up the phone and call a friend you haven't talked to in a long time.  The sound of a friend's voice is priceless.  It's the sound of belonging.