Media and Mates

Friendships and Human Connections

This post is a side reference to the earlier post Pinked by Technology.

The post mentioned a handwritten article as an in-class assignment, in twenty minutes¹. As promised the article will be shared.

Follow up post to this post has now been published Media and Mates-2, Friendship and human connections

However, to provide some context, the next few posts will be about friendships and human connections.  

One of the posts will have the entire article mentioned in the post ‘Pinked By Technology.’ 

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IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A FRIEND WHO IS FAULTLESS, YOU WILL BE FRIENDLESS

-RUMI

Gothenburg, Sweden: Around Christmas

Over Used and Under Understood Words

Words like friendship and love are overused, and under understood.

Both in life and in stories, especially those told through the electronic media.

Because of the frequency and volume of media content we consume, we mistakenly take stories on screens to be a close rendering of our human condition.

Movies do touch upon human emotions but can never tell the complete story.

Media content can only graze the surface of human emotions. Yet, as our interaction with technology increases, that is the only way we have to understand our feelings.

With the rise in technology, increased movements of people, and breakdown first of communities, then of families, people of all ages feel lost. They may be too busy to acknowledge it. But most feel a sense of disconnect. This observation comes to me from my interaction with students around the world. 

Therefore, the focus on creating a family, which gives a sense of purpose². However, today even family fails to create a sense of belongingness, because the larger community, the container of family is missing in places wherever modernity and its technological offspring have landed, namely electronic communication³.

Hence the perpetual feeling of anxiety, a restlessness and constant need for both relaxation and stimulation.

In Sweden, since it is a small country, there is a trend to return to one’s home-town. Often people date their school/college mates and hold contact with their childhood friends well into old age.

In my opinion, as much as I enjoy them, movies can only graze the surface of human emotions.

Stories told through audio-visual media scarcely reach the recesses of our hearts. Content we watch on big or little screen hardly depicts the profundity of emotions that course through our being.

Words and images, no matter how well-crafted, are only second to the experience of experiencing an emotion.

How do you explain, define, depict friendship?

A slow ongoing recognition, that builds up one interaction after another, and is neither accompanied by dramatic transitions nor inspiring music leading to a crescendo, as we see in the movies. Instead, it grows like a vine as we meander through errands of our lives. If we are lucky, we realize years/decades later, that the vine, though hidden in the forest of our lives, was following us, supporting us, noticing us and sending us good vibes.

Equally important –is the delight when we notice that the vine is not as feeble as it looks. Even when it seems lost in the jungle of life that surrounds us—its roots go deep into the ground that we stand on.

An invisible, often unacknowledged support.

What are friends for?

Many treat friendship as a weed, something that will gift us with pretty flowers every summer, even when we forget to water it.

“We connected after five years of no contact and picked up right where we left.”

“We don’t keep in touch, but we know we are connected.”

Being left alone during the most trying times of lives, is a condition of modern life.

We accept it.

Because, after all, we are all ‘busy’.

Yet, we are ever ready to claim friendships’ benefits, credits and all that is allowed within the bounds of our bragging rights. A cheerful laughter, a casual mention and a mutual nudge on holidays—those days that rake up our existential issues.

It’s true that friendship has no purpose, and yet the value of a friend reveals itself over time. From a random stranger to wearing the crown of a confidant should not be taken lightly.

The value of a friend reveals itself over time

Friendship’s worth is in the fact that, when true, it has no motive. Yet, a true to heart amity colors our life in a meaningful way.

There is no finished product.

The fun is in -first doodling mindlessly, then coloring deliberately.

Somewhere in between is a recognition that a supportive frame outlines our existence, and works like a shock absorber through the tornados of life.

Although the friendship-frame is a constant, we notice it only during our low times.

Don’t we all remember those who sat with us when we cried, more than those who celebrated with us? If we forget those who wiped our tears, then we cannot call ourselves friends to anyone.

And if the people who laugh with us are the same as who offer us tissues when we are crying, then we’ve hit a jackpot.

Then, ladies and gentlemen, we have a friend!!

Glibness and Friendship

In his widely read article titled Faux Friendship⁴ William Deresiewicz⁵ laments the glibness which the word friendship is used in the modern world. The term ‘friendship’ is now applied to any relationship- -- colleagues, spouses, parents and children.

“We live at a time when friendship has become both all and nothing at all… the form of connection in terms of which all others are understood, against which they are all measured, into which they have all dissolved. Romantic partners refer to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend…. Parents … beg their teenagers to think of them as friends….. Teachers, clergymen, and even bosses seek to mitigate and legitimate their authority by asking those they oversee to regard them as friends. We’re all on a first-name basis, and when we vote for president, we ask ourselves whom we’d rather have a beer with.

Modernity argues Deresiewicz, altered the way we view friendships. We started to think in terms of, no commitments, no pressure, egalitarian, individualistic…etc. All those terms that are considered modern, and hence progressive.

Modernity believes in equality, and friendships, unlike traditional relationships, are egalitarian. Modernity believes in individualism. Friendships serve no public purpose and exist independent of all other bonds. Modernity believes in choice. Friendships, unlike blood ties, are elective; indeed, the rise of friendship coincided with the shift away from arranged marriage.

Like modern relationships, stresses Deresiewicz, friendships require no fixed commitments.

While I agree with all of the above, I must highlight that the non-western world is still quite different. There are unspoken but well understood expectations in friendships. And intergenerational friendships are quite common, mainly because even today people live in the same space for decades. For example, I grew up in the same house where my father grew up. That set up allows you time to create common memories, and (if we are lucky) some auto-generated friendships. Those folks who know your life history and trajectory. Some of it overlaps theirs, too. Some of these relationships turn out to be like siblings, without the sibling rivalry.

In addition, not all western countries are the same. In Sweden, since it is a small country⁶, there is a trend to return to one’s home-town. Often people date their school/college mates and hold contact with their childhood friends well into old age.

One incident I remember fondly from my first few months in Sweden was seeing 20-30–40-year-old men hanging out. In bunches. It was a common sight. Why was it unusual? Because each one of them had a toddler hanging on his arm. Often you’d see young men with children in pram/strollers. Or in a restaurant you’d several men sitting around a large table, each handling a toddler while carrying on a conversation. Since it was something I had never seen anywhere else and I know Sweden’s liberal outlook, I thought maybe these were same-sex couples. But imagine my surprise to find out that it is common for men to take parental leave at the same time so they can hang out together with their friends, while attending to their children, while their wives are at work. Friends who take parental leave together schedule meetings where every man brings his child along.

Friendship in Media

Some, if not a major, blame as to be placed on the media.

All forms.

But especially audio-visual and now virtual, which advertises many of its products under banner of ‘best way to spend your time, best F.R.I.E.N.D.S, virtual assistant etc.’

Somewhere in between is a recognition that a supportive frame outlines our existence, and works like a shock absorber through the tornados of life.

Similar to other human emotions like ‘love’ (which I remind the readers and myself --is not just ‘romantic’) we get our understanding of friendship from the media. But media content is time bound. With the advertising model, we know that an hour-long content must have 20 or more minutes of ads. An average movie is between 90-180 minutes. Indian movies can be three hours or long, yet each piece of art is also bound to resolution of conflicts.

Does that happen in life? So much remains unresolved.

How much of life and its interactions, can be captured in a 2-3-hour time period? Especially when their ultimate aim is to look for a resolution, possibly a happy one?

Or how much can we show in half-hour sitcoms around humorous thirty-minute plots, that run for a decade?

Have you seen ‘Friends’ lately?

Just asking  !

Knowing fully well that media content is contrived, we sit and watch (myself included).

Why? Why do we flock to shows that are only a fraction of reality?

To re-live, to re-experience what we felt, to uplift ourselves with what we consider the ideal, hope for the ideal, to feel connected, to understand ourselves just as much as others.

Stories, as they say, are not the truth but relatable truths.

We make do with the bits we recognize and fill the rest in our minds.

Movies and Songs

However, let me end this grim sounding post, on a positive note. And I use audio-visual to make the point!

Following is an ad for Pepsi. But look past it.

It’s a very emotional video about love and friendship. The background song in the is from 1981 bollywood movie (in Hindi), sung at 1.5 speed of the original song.

Slowing down the speed adds to the intended nostalgia.

It almost sounds like a love-song. The words go, '

tere jaisa yaar kahaan
kahan aisa yaaraana
yaad karegi duniya
tera mera afsaana

where can one find a friend like you
where are there such friendships...
the world will remember,
this story of ours...

meri zindagi sanwaari
mujhko gale lagaa ke
bai Tha diya falak pe
mujhe khaaT se uThaa ke

you changed my life for good,
by embracing me...
you put me on the sky,
picking me up from the ground...

School Years in India

But equally important is the context. In India, most of the middle-class goes to private schools. Since these are family owned schools, we have the luxury of sharing twelves years of our life with the same people, unless our parents move to another state. This allows an extended time to develop deep friendships resulting in a very special knowledge of each other.

Eating lunches, that our mothers packed for us, in the middle of the class was something we all did. It was our way of rebelling by eating at times other than lunch recess. Many a times we stole other people’s lunches for fun and whispered into their ears during the class how much we appreciated their mother’s cooking.

It was mostly something the boys did.

But eating together in a group where we shared our mother’s cooking was a daily affair. We knew each other’s mothers by their cooking, even if had not met them.

‘Notice the teacher mouthing, ‘What are you doing? Get out of the class.”

Also a common affair. We winked at our friends if we were thrown out together, in a Tom Sawyer solidarity.

We talked non-stop. Even during class-photograph sessions. Our silly expressions frozen in those photographs. And a reminder how close we wanted to sit/stand next to our best friend.

Then there is the farewell party that you get to see in the video. As opposed to a prom, common in the west, farewell party for the graduating seniors who we may have known for a decade of our short lives was an emotional affair.

Eleventh graders prepared for it for months. The twelfth graders, ready to be collegiates came dressed like adults. Teachers, juniors, janitors, and classmates all got emotional. There were hugs and tears. And much reminscing. We sang and danced till late, looking forward to our future lives, promising to keep in touch. Even though the most common way of keeping in touch were meeting in person, an occasional phone call, which were hardly private because the phone was always in the living room, and hand written letters.

And yet, many of us followed through on that promise.

In the next post in this series we will talk about how electronic storytelling constricts our imagination and how friendship has been rendered in different lingua-cultures.

The follow up post has not been published, click here to read.

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1.

2. Several posts will follow related to this concept and its connection with mental health.

3. A Catch 22, —did we loose community because we have electronic communication now, or do we have electronic communication to fill the gap because of the absence of a community in our proximity?

4. https://www.chronicle.com/article/faux-friendship/

5. Follow updates on Deresiewicz’s writing here: https://deresiewicz.substack.com

6. Both area wise and in terms of the population (less than 11 million).