WHO IS AN AUTHENTIC FRIEND?

A friend could be considered someone who sticks more proximate than a brother. Is that the kind of friend you wish? Is that the kind of friend you are? To avail you answer those questions, wrote down three qualities that you would wish a friend to have. Then wrote down three qualities that you bring to a comity. Ask yourself: Which of my online contacts exhibit the qualities that I value in a friend? Which qualities would those friends verbally express I bring to the comity?

UNABRIDGED COMMUNICATION:

Thanks to technology, you can connect with more people and do so more conveniently than at any other time in history. Still, the relationships you have might seem rather shallow. One adolescent man put it this way: I feel as if my comities could just fizzle out. On the other hand, my dad has friends he’s been proximate to for decades!”

Why is it such a challenge these days to relish enduring and paramount comities?

TECHNOLOGY MAY BE PARTLY TO INCULPATE:

Texting, gregarious networking, and other gregarious media have made it seem possible to maintain a comity without being in someone’s presence. Paramount conversations have been superseded by rapid-fire texts and tweets. People are having fewer face-to-face interactions, verbally expresses the book Artificial Maturity. “Students spend more time in front of a screen and less time with each other.

In some cases, technology can make comities seem more proximate than they genuinely are. Recently, I realised that by texting my friends to optically discern how they were, I was doing an abundance of the work. Then I ceased texting them to optically discern how many of them would take the initiative to contact me. Veraciously, it’s been very few. Ostensibly, some friends weren’t as proximate as I mentally conceived.

But cannot texting and gregarious media avail you keep in touch with people and thereby reinforce your amities? Yes especially if you additionally have an offline relationship with those people. Often, however, gregarious media merely builds bridges to others without drawing you any more proximate to them.

ASSOCIATE WITH PEERS:

There is nothing quite equipollent to face-to-face conversation, where you and another person can observe the subtle nuances of voice tone, countenance, and body language.

ESTABLISH PRIORITIES:

Online amities are often predicated on a shared interest, such as a hobby. However, having mundane values is more consequential than having homogeneously fascinated. I may not have an abundance of friends, but the ones I do have to make me want to be a better person.

WRITE A LETTER:

Antediluvian as it may seem, letter writing sends the message that you care enough about someone to give him or her - your undivided attention. That kind of focus is infrequent in today’s multitasking world. For example, in her book Alone Together, Sherry Turkle writes of one adolescent man who verbalises he cannot recollect ever receiving a personal letter in his life. Referring to the time when people write letters, I miss those days albeit I wasn’t alive. Why not make utilisation of this ‘old technology’ to make friends?

THE BOTTOM LINE:

Authentic amity involves more than just keeping in touch. It requires that you and your friend exhibit love, empathy, patience, and forgiveness. Those qualities ultimately make an amity rewarding. But they are arduous to exhibit when you only verbalise online.