Proximity…
Talk about being forced to start at square one…
In the last decade…most EVERYONE ‘familiar’ in my life disappeared.
Family, friends, husband…all gone.
Some by their choice and some by mine…some by death.
Some are barely ‘alive’…perhaps just because I frequently resuscitation the relationships.
But I also realized those were ALWAYS barely ‘alive’…I just hadn’t paid attention…because I believed we were in some form of a ‘relationship’…that was MY perspective…but not reality.
What a mind boggling observation to experience…
They say proximity is what creates relationships…
When we are children we make tonnes of friends…
We are ALL doing the same activities…like 12 years together in school…we have play, school and other extra curriculars in common…so we spend a lot of time together in proximity of each other.
The great and the greatest bonds are created at that time.
I heard the concept of proximity from a content creator last week…
Made so much sense to me…this is my perspective on it keeping in mind my experiences.
Most of those bonds with me were broken when my peers went off to college and I didn’t…not much proximity any longer.
Through our 20s a few kept in contact when we were in proximity…considering we lived in different countries.
Then came jobs marriage and children…and life carries on.
New relationships replaced most old one’s because of proximity.
Then social media was born…emails and chatting.
A few old one’s remain plus some new one’s…emails made a little more proximity…thats when ecards came about and we mostly ditched real hand written cards…or any type of hand written correspondence.
Next came Facebook…
Our address books turned into friends list on Facebook.
Then came smart phones and that changed EVERYTHING…
No cards, no need to meet, or even really communicate…we have texting, emojiis and ghosting.
That’s when I became in proximity with the floaters and the drifters…hoards of them…
My fb friends list was up to over 500 over night.
I let them drift out of proximity.
Now I have maybe 100 fb friends.
Then tragedies in life occured as nature intended…
Divorce, illness, death…and still more dispersed.
You find out what is family and who are your friends under dire straits.
In fun times EVERYONE is your first cousin.
In tragedy no one wants to be in your proximity.
They have their own life to deal with and they are sure we can reconnect in good times again…
Nope, Nahin, La, Nyet, Nein, Non, Não…
Absofuckinglutely NOT!
Unfortunately THAT’S not how that works…
Flatline………………………………
NOW we are no longer in mental proximity.
So it just ain’t gonna work.
Square one…
New life, very few new family of friends…making new proximities.
Now we ALL Facebook and WhatsApp friends…sending clever memes to each other😉✌️🫶
