Good morning, digital neighbors! Happy Monday, Friends & Refugees, Early Birds & Later Dayers, Conversants & Lurkers, ADD Irregulars, Coffee Talkers and WSN Curators, Phamily, Misfits & Dawn Patrol, and Seekers of Sanity and Civility! I hope you all had a great weekend, and welcome back to Monday and another run at the week. If you aren’t part of the work week or dealing with school, Monday probably doesn’t mean too much. Either way, another week is unfolding—how about a look at friends and friendship for these next 6 days?

Social media creates interesting friendships; we can connect with people we have never met and may never meet in person. Yet in the little screens that connect us, we can begin to know others, sometimes connecting more easily than in real life. I remember the first wave of this reality back in the ’90s with AOL chat rooms and instant messaging. It was amazing to chat with people from around the world in real time or even interact with them on bulletin boards or other forums.

The screen is an interesting reality; it affords us some distance and control over conversation that real life does not provide. In theory, it gives someone more time to think before responding, but that theory doesn’t hold much water. Too often, that anonymity and distance bring out the pettier side of humanity—a boldness and rudeness that few would have displayed publicly in the 1990s. Jump ahead 30 years, and now people act as poorly in public as they used to when only being brave behind their screen. Interacting too much through screens seems to be bad for our mental health. We have road rage in our cars and internet idiocy on our computers.

Idiocy is not just an observation of their intelligence for me, but also a statement of emotional derangement rather than emotional composure. I loathe the word “trigger,” but some people have subjects, issues, or fixations that take them to 11 almost immediately. For many, just mentioning the Donald is enough to fracture their brain. More than likely, they could use a good friend to help balance them rather than an echo chamber of agreement that mutes critical thought and emotional integration. A communion of rage and hatred mimics friendship, but it is not friendship.

Friendships come in many layers; many are superficial and others are depth relationships, and usually only a few are so close that they can be an accurate mirror of the self. But you never know when life is going to place someone in your life that you have been waiting to meet and make a difference. We don’t need many friends, but if you have none, you are a prisoner to your own thoughts and feelings. Such a prison is not a place of enlightenment but often a distortion chamber. Well, this is already cruising into TL;DR territory. Happy Monday, my friends! Some quotes and some beauty! TTFN!

Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed. - Cicero

The only way to have a friend is to be one. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The way to make a true friend is to be one. Friendship implies loyalty, esteem, cordiality, sympathy, affection, readiness to aid, to help, to stick, to fight for, if need be. The real friend is he or she who can share all our sorrows and double our joys. Radiate friendship and it will return sevenfold. - B.C. Forbes

Autumn Barn - Roland Schumann - Unsplash