My birthday is July 12, and a lot of people wished me a happy one that Sunday.
Having friends is among life’s joys, but the wishes — many, many, many, many — came on Facebook.
Is that to be commended? Let’s ponder that, Arlingtonians.
I am not a FB fanatic, as are my brother in Florida, my sister near Montreal or my son and his wife in Georgia. Via Mr. Zuckerberg’s appropriation, we see the joyful antics of our grandchildren, 6 and 8, water-sliding through some birthday party or waging “gladiator” battles in soft environments.
I have a Facebook page on YourArlington, but I do not monitor my personal page much beyond my grandkids’ activities. When I take a peek beyond, I’m usually surprised by who or what is posted there. Most people there are “friends” or want to be. I block a few.
The idea of having a friend who is connected to you largely via the ether of the Internet is an odd notion.
I know what it is like to have real, face-to-face friends. You enjoy each other’s company, even if you disagree and debate. It’s more than that: You share an intimacy of thoughts and feelings.
Sometimes you become so close to a friend that you marry.
Writing in nearby Concord more than 170 years ago, Emerson noted that “a friend is a sane man who exercise not my ingenuity, but me. My friend gives me entertainment without requiring me to stop, or to lisp, or to mask myself. A friend therefore is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.”
How would Facebook fit in to this idea? Haltingly, methinks.
Yet, on the whole, perhaps against my better judgment, I accept the Facebooking of the world. On one level, for family reasons, I have to: One of my daughters baby-sits for the child of a local Facebook executive and his wife.
In response to the outpouring of acknowledgment of my birthday via a long stream of FB emails, I want to express my thanks to all of you.
I answered only family members and one Arlington wit — you know who you are — who sent me a happy-birthday song to “the Bobs of the world.” Of course, that includes the discount-furniture Bob.
So let these written words of gratitude serve for all who saw the Facebook notice July 12 and clicked the right button.
You are my many modern, non-Emersonian friends.
This viewpoint was published Sunday, July 12, 2015.
