"When a Friend is Not a Friend"
Mar. 8, 1997
"When a Friend is Not a Friend"
I revel in communication, cherishing all the anonymous people who react to my web pages
through my guest book and e-mail. I truly enjoy knowing that my words and ideas have reached
every corner of the world and affected so many strangers. All writers publish for this reason, and
the WWW is my publishing company.
Publishing a personal homepage satisfies many of my needs, but it also has some pitfalls. By making some of my views and parts of my life open knowledge to the world, I create a level of intimacy that can be misconstrued. Yes, I am a gregarious person, yes, I love e-mails and letters, but no, I do not consider everyone with whom I have contact a friend--not in the true sense.
I differentiate between acquaintances and friends. Perhaps this is a fine point and a matter of semantics, but it is an important point to me. I've corresponded with acquaintances more than once, and I may know a few details about their lives. Our occasional e-mails are about computers or culture or some such general topic, and I enjoy the repartee. But no matter how much fun I have or how often I correspond, these nice people are not my personal or "good" friends.
My friends are a small group of very important individuals. I am personally involved in their lives and they in mine. I have a devotion to my friends and a willingness to share their successes and struggles and help them in any way I can. These friendships grew because we wanted to go beyond the casual. Our closeness developed carefully and seamlessly over time, never forced or contrived, because the old cliche is true: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink."
You can find site after site created by fascinating, intelligent people and wish that you could get to know them. You can e-mail them, "chat" with them, and even get their help and opinions on various issues, but that does not mean they are suddenly friends. More than once I've had a brief e-mail exchange with someone who starts out highly interested in corresponding, only to have one of us lose interest and quit e-mailing. This is NOT a slap in the face. It is not a tragic loss, a personal blow, or a case of misunderstanding. It's simply life. I don't get all paranoid or morose about the fact that I no longer hear from that person. I simply find other interesting sites and other interesting people in the world and start chatting. I make new acquaintances.