5,000 friends. 100 thousand followers. Shares. Likes. Comments. DMs. We live in an age of posts and status updates where many of us share our lives, our intimate moments with people we know, people we admire, people we are acquainted with and may have never even met and it is evolving the definition of friendship.
The quality of our community is determined by the quality of our interpersonal interactions. Indigenous people hold bonds deep as a result of our common heritage and history. Now more than ever though, in the wake of so much turmoil and simultaneous opportunity; we are in need of deeper bonds and stronger relationships to weather the stresses that demonic assaults our collective consciousness and to take advantage of the abundance that exists for us to actualize a new world.
Recently; I watched a documentary on Nina Simone and though there were many amazing reflections on her life, what struck the deepest chord was her experience as a social activist during the civil rights movement. Her infamous song Mississipi Goddamn, galvanized the movement. Deeper than her musical contribution, I marveled at the fact that she shared deep friendships and bonds with people like James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz. That beyond the icons we have learned to interpret these individuals as, that they were all friends. They shared time at each other’s homes. They watched one another children. They shared one another’s struggles. In our finest hour of black genius, these monuments of our legacy of resistance were more to one another than bookmarks to one another. They bore witness to tragedy, death, pain, love, joy, birth – the full gambit of human experience. Their community of artists, activists, musicians and the like built a movement that we today find inspiration from. I ponder what if any legacy would exist had they not formed these intimate bonds and relationships, where we would be in 2015 without them knowing one another?
In the age of social media, I think it is ever so apparent that we recognize that our very human existence is evolving and while our social lives may reside online, that we recognize that our intimacy unto one another requires more than an Instagram post together. It requires us to love. To hear each other’s cries of pain. To be listening ears. To learn to be there for one another. To call. To check each other on one another’s bullshit. To congratulate. To empathize. To send a text message. To visit. To recognize the value we have to others and to tell each other that we see each other and value our contributions, however small. To forgive.
How do we begin to cultivate these deeper bonds? For starters, realize that we are real people with real dreams and aspirations. That we are not brands and images solely focused on self-promotion. We are spiritual beings have human experiences. That beyond our profile breathes a human being with flesh blood, experience, and contemplation that by our very nature yearns to connect with others of like mind and purpose. That real friendship is work, not just confined to good times and joy but also sharing in spaces of consolation, compassion, and empathy. That just as much as we may find ourselves questing for success, we must take the time to be there for the ones we value and adore and that – is true success in the deepest essence of the word.
Today community and friendship is by choice. Friends are deeper than profile pics and tags of photos and status updates. We need one another more than ever.