One of the strangest elements to social media for me is the re-emergence of people I knew many years ago through the portal of Facebook or Google+. Life seems to have flowed nicely for me as through conscious and unconscious processes I have selected the people I want traveling with me through life. There are often new people that freshen my experiences and very occasionally someone I knew in the past who reappears.The former, though is rare. My sense is that there are reasons that friends and acquaintances have fallen out of may frame of experience. These are not often dramatic events but largely just shifts in mine or their personalities and what once brought us together is now no longer relevant. All very natural and for me, a healthy part of living and changing.
Social media, however throws much of this seemingly organic process into reverse. The passage of time has seen a gulf appear between me and these once friends that can be geographic, dependent on social circles or both. Whatever the reality we are not together and have no reason to be. So when one of these past people pops up through social media the shock can be significant. The gulf is bridged by something intangible, a portal indeed that seems to bend time and life to re-connect us in the present.
What is unique is the way this happens, combined with the ritual that surrounds it; what is accepted as good practice in response to a request to reconnect. This happened to me recently. The contact was friendly, entirely unexpected and from someone long since consigned to a box of photographs kept in the loft. The contact, though was framed as though the time apart had been months, weeks even; as though all that was required was a response from me and we would be back to our old ways, our old relationship.
My first response was instant. We were close once, but that time has gone. I am struggling to recognise you from your picture and if we have not been in touch for ten years then there is sufficient evidence that we are past friends.
Four days after receiving the post I replied. I was more than not being rude, not being dismissive but it took time for me to unravel my motivation with touching the past as though it were the present.
I thought about why I should accept this re-connection and go further to make real contact. The realisation that came to me was presaged by me eating bubble gum. Two chews, the first in 25 years, and I was a child again with friends, on bikes, playing cards in spokes and caps worn back to front. A true Proustian memory as involuntary as the term implies. The very mention of their name took me back in an instant to a past experience and connection just seemed natural.
Familiarity and the comfort that it can bring struck me hard. Forget the detail and, maybe, forget that I had memories of a good friend. The contact simply transported me back to a complete landscape that I was interested to find was now removed of all the unpleasant stuff. I had filtered out the negative aspects to that time and to our shared past experience and just remembered the good stuff, comfortably sporting some rose tinted spectacles.
I am struck that this re-connection proved to be short. We soon knew that there was nothing but memories to share in common and once these had been aired we were just two very different people. However, there were no regrets in making that contact again. The memories were polished and safe and my sense of self enlivened by the influence of the past. Ultimately, I know me to be now, in part, the result of that past and the people whose company I enjoyed as I have travelled through life.
