I learned something very valuable over this last weekend. While I love the aspect of FaceBook and social media in general and how it allows a person to stay in touch with old friends and relatives, it is a poor substitute at best to spending time with someone face to face. The example that finally made me realize this happened over the weekend. My wife and traveled to attend a surprise birthday party of an old friend, who was a groomsman in our wedding. A wonderful individual, with a wonderful family, who I had only seen face to face once since our wedding (we moved out of state) once in 13 years. Yes, I’ve talked to him via Facebook; I’ve clicked “Like” on his photos and status update, but no “real” interaction or contact. I thought we were going to a party but we were heading to something so much more than that. There were hugs all around. His now grown children, even though I had not seen them in more than a decade, ran up and hugged me still calling me “Uncle Larry”. It brought tears to my eyes! We sit and visited for hours! The topics were widely varied, but even the subject matter of the conversation didn’t matter. It was all about the face to face time. The evening kept getting better; soon another groomsmen from our wedding shows up! Same situation had seen him once or twice briefly in the last decade. More hugs, more fantastic conversation! It was a wonderful evening, the best in recent memory. It made me realize that no matter how many e-mails, text messages or whatever social media we use to stay in contact, if we don’t make time for actually seeing that person, we loose the best part of friendship. The same goes for when we have our differences. Social media, e-mail and text messages are not the answer to solving our differences. When it comes to settling our disagreements, nothing will ever be better than sitting down face to face with that person. Maybe it’s time we all actually get a little more social and stop relying so much on ‘Social Media”. for when we forget how to actually talk to each other, all hope really will be lost. Thanks for a great evening and wonderful lesson Mike Rivera, Yvonne Samora Rivera, Raquel Rivera Dominguez, Anthony Panda Rivera and Paul Herrera!
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 02:48:13 +0000
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