Facing the book

Many people have the opinion that social life should not function through Internet.
Using e-mails, Skype and websites like Facebook.
They are even opposed to this new way of socializing and see it as the beginning of the end of a society as we know it.

Undeniably it is essential for people to socialize in person.
To have eye to eye contact and to be in each other's physical presence.
To feel each other.
But this essentiality doesn't exclude socializing through Internet as well.
As an additional social activity.
To do both: to embrace a friend who happens to be in town ànd to have later a long Skype video-image conversation with this friend on the other side of the globe.

One of the remarkable aspects of Facebook is that it has the option to find friends that were lost.
When on the site of Facebook, and registered as a user, one can put in any name and see if that person happens to be with Facebook also.
Facebook has been growing tremendously.
There are more than 500 million active users.
50 % of them log on to Facebook any given day.
An average Facebook user has 130 Facebook friends.
So, it is very likely that a long forgotten friend is with Facebook also and can therefore be found.

In this way several Facebook messages have been received of friends that were lost somehow.
And new communication has started with them.

Like with B.
A beautiful Polish woman with who life was shared for a while twenty years ago.
Living together in Cadaques, Spain and dancing in the Roxy Disco in Amsterdam.
And then suddenly it finished and contact was lost.

Until she sent a Facebook message.
To have dinner last night where memories were shared.

Some memories were remembered jointly.
But some memories were forgotten by the other.

After the memories of the shared life came the telling of the stories that have happened in the twenty years since.
Sharing delicate events in warm friendship.
That has re-started.

And this would not likely have happened if not for Facebook.





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