“I’m in no hurry, you go run and tell your friends I’m losing touch. Fill their heads with rumors of impending doom. It must be true.” ~The Killers
Look around you. These are the people who survived. At least for now.
A “friend” of mine recently posted on Facebook that he was doing widespread cuts to his friends list, not because he suddenly hated everyone on it, but simply because it was time to trim. He said he based the cuts on people he hasn’t really communicated with over the last year, and to an extent that makes sense.
Think about it. How many of your friends, Facebook or otherwise, would make that cut? And I mean communication not in a superficial way, something past “hi,” and “hey,” and the random birthday greeting because Facebook reminded them it was your special day. How many people can you honestly say you’ve spent meaningful time with in the past year?
List is pretty small, isn’t it? And that’s okay. Because we aren’t meant to have a million meaningful relationships in this life, or even from one year to the next. There are some people who simply drop off. We lose touch for many different reasons. From year to year it happens, and yet we’ll still say we are friends. We still claim we are as close as perhaps we used to be, probably because we don’t realize we aren’t. Not anymore.
I can’t tell you how many people occupied a prime position in my life over the years who have just disappeared, who have lost touch for whatever reason. Being close to someone is a two way street. It takes work from both people involved. But our interests change. Our lives change. And we can’t blame others for losing touch. Usually we are both to blame, in one way or another.
My biggest surprise: when all was said and done, and my friend sent out the post that he was done, that we who remained, who were sitting there reading his post, could breathe a sigh of relief. We had made it through the minefield. But relief wasn’t the emotion I felt when I read it. I wasn’t feeling lucky, but merely depressed that this is the world we live in now. We try to reason out why we lose touch. We try to take control by cutting others off first, then broadcasting it, because we broadcast everything these days. It just makes me sad.
There is not much worse than when we realize we are losing touch, and we fight against it but it’s already done. Our grip shouldn’t get tighter. It is the natural order of things. People are in our lives for a reason, and some are definitely for life, but others are simply for a season, and are meant to drift away on the breeze after. Our problem is that we mistake the two all the time. So culling our friends list is a smart move, because it’s already been culled by time. We are just finally acknowledging it. Just don’t broadcast it. For my sake.
Sam
Sam's Online Journal 
Very thought provoking. I think that one if the benefits of social media is actually having the possibility of touch for those relationships that have drifted for various reasons. People who once held a prime spot in my life, even if we don’t talk for years, are still people I know would jump to my rescue if ever called upon (and vice versa). So I leave them on my friends lists..knowing it’s a lasting bond we have that doesn’t always need constant communication.
I also believe that it really is okay to lose touch with someone. Forcing ourselves to hang on to people who were important to us in the past can really damage the relationships that are truly valuable in the present.
Here’s to the cull! (although I haven’t gotten around to doing it myself yet)
It’s hard to let go, though, even if we know it is detrimental to us to keep trying to hang on at this point. It’s tough to ever say goodbye to people who used to mean a lot to us.