Severing the “Friends-list”

With social mediums like Facebook and LinkedIn, we don’t have to let go of old friendships. As we move from place to place, we can keep adding new people to our profiles. This means when we go to a new area, we can keep in touch with old friends rather than focusing on making new ones.

The difficulty with this is that we tend to collect friends. When I moved from Minnesota to Texas, Mississippi, and South Carolina, I met a lot of new people. As I settled down here, I look at my friends-list on Facebook. I’ve gained around 100 new people whom I no longer have regular physical contact with.

What’s the point in retaining friendships that don’t have value? Most of these people don’t comment on my posts and I don’t comment on theirs. Occasionally I’ll get a notified about their birthdays or recent events, but other than that, there’s no one-on-one communication.

It seems like social media has become more about a public image than about being social with friends. It’s about who can have the most glamorous life and create the most interesting posts. Our online friendships aren’t limited to our real-life friend groups, they’re public. Why else do we have our entire high school added to our friends-list? Why do we add people who we weren’t ever friends with and who we won’t have regular contact with?

Much of Facebook has become about public image. There isn’t a good way to separate your close group of friends from the wide group of people who you have on Facebook. Think about it. You have your close friends, who you can be personal with, and you have your associates, who you want to be able to contact or continue to follow. What you share with your close friends is different than what you share with those who you generally associate with.

Does all this damage our ability to form new friendships? If we are retaining old friends, is there a need to create new friendships? Think about it this way: if you move to a new city in 1985, would you meet new people or try to stay in contact with your old group? In 2005, would you have retained contact or moved on? I think our ability to maintain contact damages the formation of new friendships.

It also makes us more rigid towards a new group of people. If we have already have a support group online, we’re less likely to need more friends. Therefore, when we meet someone new who doesn’t share our interests, we’re less likely to get over our differences and make a new friendship. If we’re desperate for a new friendship, we’ll deal with differences. If we have a large group of friends, we’re going to be more picky.

As I scroll through my NewsFeed today, I have to ask myself: do I need to retain these contacts? Should I remove those who I don’t keep in contact with? When should we sever old friendships? How is this affecting me in real life? Perhaps we need to find a compromise between our online world and the one in which we physically live.



Do people change or do we change?







31/31 Blogtober


Circumstantial Friendship





Grabbing onto the Wheel






















Friends without Borders


In 2010, I hosted an exchange student from Basque Country (Northern Spain). We hit it off so much that, after he left, I immediately went to visit him in his country. These trips back and forth to Spain (and to the USA for him) lasted for 3 years. Each time we stayed for about a month in each other’s home.

The first year was different from all the others because it was the first time I traveled alone internationally. The village I lived in was small, and everyone was connected. Each person came from a different background but during the summer, when everyone moved out to their summer homes, they came together.

This photo is of my friend Jennifer and I when we first met. Jagoba (who I was living with) brought me up one night to meet his best friend. We climbed onto the side of a mountain where a church stood and found her waiting for us. I handed my camera to Jagoba and told him to take a picture of us, even though we hadn’t really introduced ourselves yet. I ran over to her and gave her a huge hug!

That was the catalyst for a great friendship while I was traveling.


Three years later (2012), we took this photo on the other side of the mountain. We had partied together, traveled together, and had many interesting conversations. Who knew that from a running hug, our friendship would start.

The interesting things is that Jennifer doesn’t really speak English… and I really, really, don’t speak Spanish. All of our communication was done in our own languages. She would speak to me in Spanish, and I would reply in English. I understood enough Spanish to pick up what she was talking about, and she knew enough English to reply to me.

You would think that this would severely limit our communication, but it didn’t. We had philosophical conversations about life and the music we loved. It got to the point that my friend Jagoba got upset.

One day he told me that he doesn’t understand how we have conversations. He spent 6 years learning English and yet, Jennifer and my communication was great! He said that he knew both English and Spanish, so he understood what each of us was saying. Jagoba wasn’t angry, he was just astonished at our ability to talk to each other.


These years that I have lived in Basque Country have shown me that everyone is human. We have different paths and will pursue different goals in life, but despite all of this, we’re able to relate to one another. Jennifer and I met 4 years ago, in mountainous Spain, where there’s good food, loud parties, and always time to go to the beach. We live very different lives but yet we’re good friends.

Looking back, this is why I’m hopeful about the future. Jennifer and I are two people who come from very different backgrounds. We don’t even share a common language but yet we’re able to live peacefully. It doesn’t matter the what our nations or society think, we are able to coexist. I hope everyone has the opportunity to meet someone like this in their lifetime. 🙂 Have a wonderful day everybody!



