Reviving lost connections
Today our house is full with family that came to stay for the holidays. It's nice having them here, a bit chaotic but there's a lot of love going around. After a while their stay starts being a bit uncomfortable, but for now all is good.
My son (~2 years old) is having lots of fun playing with his cousins, which is an extra bonus. I'm really happy that they get along so well. I wonder if it will stay like this forever (hopefully yes), or if it will be like it was for me and my cousins where we got along really well when we were kids but there came a point when we just stopped talking. I don't know anything about their current lives, and it has been years since I cared to check what they were up to. I guess the fault is on both parts.
To be fair with them (and with me) I did move far away when I was little. I'm talking about more than a 10 hours flight; another continent. Our parents did what they could to make us play when we went back to my original country, but they can only do so much. Eventually the baton passed to us, the new generation, and we just dropped it. That's what happens when you're living different lives I guess.
I know I could pursue a superficial relationship with them, like sending them funny gifs or whatnot on social media. The problem is that (1) I don't really use any social media, and (2) I'm not sure if this is better than any other kind of shallow connection like sending them a happy birthday message once a year.
I have a brother and he does keep up with most of our cousins through social media — mainly Instagram. As he tells it they don't really talk with words but instead just send each other funny stuff. I guess that is a good way to at least keep some sort of rapport with someone, at least create a channel that allows each one of you to tell the other person that you're thinking about them in a noncommittal way.
To this end I've tried (a couple of times) to get into the habit of using Instagram. I've told myself I can start small and send stuff to my closest friends, then build up to ones I haven't spoken to in a while, and eventually to childhood friends and my cousins. This works well for a couple of weeks but eventually I find my mental health suffers so I abandon my efforts.
I don't know if it happens for other people (I guess not for most) but after spending some time on any social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and even Mastodon) I end up feeling dirty, like my mind is heavy, my spirit somehow tainted by the experience. I make an effort of just following accounts that post nice and funny things, or poetry and art, but still it happens.
I think it has something to do with consuming lots of short-form content. Maybe the constant context switching is something I don't enjoy, and the uncomfortableness of it just builds up, and up, and up. And when I close the app I realize I feel bad, almost nauseous, sometimes I feel like I even hate myself for spending so much time on it (although hate might too strong of a word).
Who knows. It's also very likely that all of the above is not true at all and I'm just sub-consciously judging my actions because I'm comparing them against a gold standard which tells me that (corporate) social media is evil and should be avoided at all costs.
Anyway, sorry for the rant here. I think I'll make an effort to think some more on how to recover some of those lost connections I've let slip in my life. Hopefully I can find a middle-ground between being pen-pals and being intimate strangers on Instagram.
~ Take care 🌱