The Ebb And Flow That Facebook Stops

As I clean up my Facebook ‘friends’ list, I’m setting some mental limits for how I use the tool. The fact that I included ‘friends’ in apostrophes should be some indication of why I am doing this.

I’m doing it because, often in life, people are meant to come and go from your world, your sphere, your active memory. As a traveler, the tendency is to try to grasp on to the fun that was had for a few nights on beaches of Hawaii while making new friends. They were cool people, weren’t they? You got along so well for that short amount of time and you felt like you really connected as humans.

Back home (or even on the road with a smart phone or laptop) you instantly looked up these new friends on Facebook, Twitter and the like. A click here and a click there and now you guys are best of mates for life!

The problem I have with this approach occurred when I started realizing not everyone I came in contact with needed to be kept, stored, referenced. You can’t bottle time and you can’t make the good times always roll. Before the age of Facebook, these types of chance encounters had their own life and like everything in life, they ended. For the most part, that is the healthy way to handle those relationships. As a flash in a pan that is marveled at and enjoyed while in existence. But then moved on from when the time comes.

I am holding on to too many of these encounters and it’s clogging my life and Facebook.  There are people I have met while traveling who take some effort to keep in touch with. There is a couple I met in Australia who I really enjoyed sharing wine and karaoke with and who just this week sent an invite to come visit. ‘In the old days’ this is how it always was. You had to call or write a letter and eventually you could write an email (which, at the time, seemed a bit like Facebook does now). These all took remembering to make contact. You remembering why you liked that person enough to put in the most minimal of efforts to type an email. You thinking about that person and caring.

Facebook, while a cool tool, changes that dynamic. Now you like someone one day and add them to Facebook the next. From that point on, zero effort is needed to keep up with what is happening in the other person’s world, if they update often enough. But it’s not really connecting like a phone call or email can when distance divides you. It’s too easy and not deep enough for my liking. Case in point; I hiked for five days with about a dozen other people on the Inca Trail in 2008. Of course I friended them on Facebook upon returning to the States, where most of us reside. But recently I removed most of them from Facebook because, well, because we really didn’t have much in common and weren’t connecting.

Three, my tent-mate Jeff as well as Alice and Heather, I kept because over time Facebook has worked its magic and I’ve gotten to known them better by interacting. But the others that were on Facebook (not all on the trip were)? We were meant to meet on the trail and then go live our lives. Ironically, the only person on that trip I have seen since was Tiffany, who I visited in Australia nearly a year later and is the only one not on Facebook.

I know I can’t collect everything in the world and bring it back with me. Life is impermanent, you can’t actually posses things and all that jazz. It took me a while to see the value in applying that approach to the relationships I make while traveling. Some are meant to be cherished and fed. Others? Sometimes you’re meant to have a few too many Guinness in an Irish bar together or enjoy a kayak trip through pristine Pacific waters and then go your own ways.

Sometimes I won’t friend you on Facebook the day after I meet you.