Friendships

I have a few close friends. I put these friends first and they have my loyalty, honour and sacrifice. I drop things I am doing if they ever need help. I am not put out by their requests for help, in fact, it makes me happy that they turn to me for that help.

Personally, I am a pretty self-contained person. I usually keep problems to myself and try to solve them myself. However, I am pretty sure that my friends would do the same for me, as I would do for them. On the few occasions I have needed help, my friends have rallied round and proven their friendship. Once or twice some friends have surprised me with the lengths they would go to in the name of friendship.

In this day and age where murder and serious crime seem to be an every day occurrence, we tend to keep ourselves to ourselves. We very rarely trust "non-friends". Is this any surprise?

Lately, however, I find that I am asking myself what is true friendship? Will I only find it in the real world, or will I find it in places like Facebook, Myspace, Bebo?

I have many "online" friends and recently I have been surprised by the depth of the friendships developed there. This has crept up on me unawares too. I enjoy chatting with people in cyberspace and I will admit that I have wondered where people are if I do not chat with them for a while. I worry about them, I hope for them, I share dreams with them.

The cynic in me asks; are they really who they say they are? Do they really want to chat and socialise with me or is there simply nothing on the TV. Who really gives a fuck? Do any of us really know each other from a once a week chat in cyberspace?

I understand the human race to be a social, outgoing collection of people. Sadly, because of the fears of life in the modern world we have retreated into our own little worlds. We are scared of what can happen if we befriend the wrong people in this world. So we don't befriend easily any more, and when we do we keep at arms length.

What Cyberspace has given us back is a feeling of security. We are safe to make friends within the security or our homes using social networking. We can give people our IM/Chat/Email addresses and if they turn out to be bad people it is easy to block them. Remove them from our lives with one simple click of the mouse. Maybe, just maybe, we are starting to find it safe to make friends again through social networking.

Now isn't that a scary thought?