Ellen Goodman, in her essay, “In Praise of a Snail’s Pace,” reminded us that some things, like condolence cards, are too important and sensitive to send via email. There are times when a personal touch is needed to lend credibility and authenticity to our communication. In other words, to hear a concerned voice expressing the solemnity of an occasion is sometimes necessary.
Treating serious and life-altering personal events as social media timeline fodder diminishes them and us. It instead begs a response from those people who we know least well only to satisfy our ever-growing need for attention. Births, deaths and life-threatening illnesses are not the kinds of things that should be broadcast to our social media followers or responded to with a “like” or sad-face emoji.
Sorry Facebook friends, but there are many of you I Have Never Met. Happy birthday! Happy anniversary! So sorry about your dog! But, my aunt’s cancer diagnosis is serious and private and needs to be treated with the decorum it deserves. I shouldn’t have to hear about it via social media.
Our true friends and family deserve more: They need to hear our held-back tears, our unconstrained joy. To share in that moment at that moment speaks to the strength of our connection. Just as I want to celebrate the good times, I want to cry with you when the moment calls for it. I want you to know how deeply I feel your joys and your pains. I want to offer you all of the warmth I can, be it with a hug or with softly spoken words of sorrow. I want to express how important you are to me even if I am thousands of physical miles away.
I know that not everyone gets to be on the “must call” list. Life happens fast. But you know your list. You know who is on it and who *should* be on it — those people who you have depended on over a lifetime, whose support and encouragement have always been there for you and who would drop everything in a second to come to your side.
Any yet, I have learned too many important things over the internet, sometimes years after the fact when my sympathy and support have nowhere to go, when my tears of joy or sympathy instead become those of sadness that I didn’t know because no one told me.
Those of you who are important to me know who you are. So, if you choose only to communicate your lives’ most important and personal events to me via email, text and posts to your FB timeline, it becomes clear that I am not important enough to you to warrant that personal touch. It tells me that our relationship is not worthy of the simple courtesy of a phone call.
And that makes me very sad.
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