While sat at home feeling sorry for myself yesterday afternoon (off sick again) I looked at my watch, and some flag got raised in my subconscious that somebody important - a long time friend on the other side of the world (the singer songwriter lady) - would be getting up soon. I then felt guilty about not having written for a long time, and decided to do just that.
Knowing how busy we both are, I decided on a Facebook message rather than an email because there was more chance of her seeing it quickly - so started typing her name into the “To” box for a new message…
The auto-complete didn’t find her.
My first suspicion was that Facebook was broken, but then discovering she had also vanished from Twitter made me start to worry.Why had she gone? What was going on? Was she ok?
I wrote an email to her private email account, asking the same questions, and then sat worrying - I even pulled Christmas Card address out, and thought about writing by hand.
Last night a response email arrived. She’s fine. There are reasons for the Facebook and Twitter withdrawl, but they are her reasons, so I’m not going to go into that (this is a bugbear of mine actually - people sharing other people’s stories on the internet when they shouldn’t).
Receiving the message reminded me that although the internet makes the world appear very small at times, when you want to find somebody - to lend them a shoulder, to give them a hug, to be there, the world is actually very, very big.
The relief when the email arrived was palpable. I’m still sat here smiling now - just receiving word has lifted me. Perhaps it’s a reminder of the power of the written word, and that we should all be taking a step back from this “connected” world… it’s not connected at all really. Real people can touch each other, hold each other’s hands, put an arm around each other’s shoulders. A written letter bears evidence of the writer’s hand. An email, or an instant message bears none of these things.