Friends

I was listening to 105.1FM radio this morning during my mommy-duties..dropping off, picking up, etc.  The radio deejays were discussing friendship with their radio audience and listeners.  The deejays asked a very good question, "Are you able to keep up and maintain all of your friendships, especially on Facebook?"  Some of the callers, including the radio deejays said they have tried, but were unable to keep up.  Especially when they were able to re-link with their childhood or college friends on Facebook.  The reason for that?  The friends just didn't keep up with them, and sometimes, vice versa, and it wasn't for lack of trying!  They would be happy to get back in touch with a "long last friend", have long conversations, exchange telephone numbers and/or become Facebook friends.  Then three weeks later they would wonder where the friends ran off to?!  It's not that they weren't around, they can "see" them on Facebook, but they assume the interest just wasn't there to maintain that friendship.  One even commented that they have their "Like" friends who will keep in touch by giving "Likes" on Facebook to their statuses, but that's as far as it goes. No engaging conversations, no follow up, nothing!


In many ways I can understand because it is hard to keep up with friends, let alone acquaintances.  Then again, if your friend is really interested in you and the friendship, they would make the effort to keep up, especially if you were the type of person to do the same.  Some people just aren't interested in being close friends.  Perhaps they have too many already, as some seem to do on Facebook! But seriously though dear reader, can you keep up with everyone of your friends?  I think you can in real life anyway if you don't have the amount your Facebook page says you have! ~smile~

I can honestly say that I have BFFs, i.e., best friends forever, great friends, good friends, and acquaintances.  My BFFs I can count on one hand, there are four of them.  We tell each other everything and know what's going on in each others lives.  We don't have to talk to each other every day. We are way too busy for that!  But we do keep in touch quite often.  Two of them I talk to more often than the other two and that's fine by us. The two I don't communicate with as often knows how much I love them and vice versa.  We're there for each other in a crisis and when we need an ear to "chew off", the phone can ring at anytime!  I have great friends, people who are really nice and I love talking to them and or hanging with them if we are ever in the same cities.  Then there are some I consider to be a good friend, but we have never met.  I can think of three right now!  I believe that I am fortunate in that way!  Good friends are those who really care about you, but you just don't talk to each other as much.  There are also the ones that used to be a good friend in the past. Now we're like ships in the nights, tooting our horns at each other to say "hi", but that's it.

Acquaintances are people I know, whether in real life or online. We keep in touch once in a while.  On Facebook we visit each other's statuses once in a while. We click "Like", just as the radio announcer said. We're aware of what's going on in each others lives just to a point.  I'm OK with that too. We don't always have to have every single person in our lives as our best friends or best buddies.  But it's nice to know that you can regard some of them as a friend. You can care about each other in a distant kind of way.

Keeping friendship is not the easiest thing to do.  It takes a lot of work, but the rewards are great when you do have true friendship!