Inspirational friends, mythical creatures and ID

To start on a high note, it is good to have friends. However, I do not like stretching high notes to breakpoints and I would like to point out that it may not always be good to have ‘some’ friends, especially if they are in your preferred social network site and make you wonder where real connections have gone or if they ever existed.

 Id used in the title is the Freudian id and is the basis of what we want but often don’t get because of our ego and ‘super’ ego and also happens to be my preferred signature and my correct initial (ID).  Thankfully, I was born long ago and I did not associate life with being the composite of what your statuses state and I resisted till the very end (and will go down resisting) the urge to have a poetic social networked alternate existence. Give me a parallel universe story any day. If it is by Neil Gaiman all the better, but I hear Ishiguro’s new one (The buried giant) also has ogres and Ishiguro’s ogre (or even three words) versus a viral video? No contest. Viruses are bad things. Bad bad things and the day Facebook can cure ebola I will believe in the power of social networking with friends. You need real people, making real connections to do that sort of thing. They may have the  ebola virus inside their left eye for 8 months and watch it turn a different color after fighting off a fatal disease in yourself and others. Now that is  a Facebook status of ‘what’s on your mind’ and correct me if you can, but I don’t think Dr. Ian Crozier had that as a status. If he did, and you think that means anything at all, then only write a status that can compare to that. And by compare, yes, I do mean compete because with FB friends, it is nothing if not a competition.

On the other hand, social networking with acquaintances is ok, that is what I do  (yes, the underlying message that what I do is right is pervading and omnipresent in what happens to be my blog) and I do think that has its good points, like raising funds (much better to research ebola with) or connecting to a writer who you cannot follow around otherwise, but would like to (that is regarded as stalking). That is also how you would bring about Egyptian revolutions using these sites, by connecting to acquaintances (albeit it was short lasting and futile but a good proof of principle). It is true that now you actually know how many children your elementary school class mate has, but since you know that of every classmate you ever had who is on FB, do tell how you remember it. I certainly can’t and emails used to be impersonal communications before, I cannot imagine what a status update is then!!

In short, now you know everything and nothing.

Coming back to competition and inspiring your friends: ‘if she can do it, so can I, it cannot be that hard/ stupid/ thoughtless’. Intrepid focus on the pronoun she, because it is not the female she, just the effeminate pronoun indicating inherent competitiveness and jealousy. That existed before FB and in other contexts this line would continue to say..’and will continue much after it has gone’ but I fear none of the social alter-egos are going anywhere. Perfectly normal for teenagers to want to seek admiration. If one thinks about it though any real inspiration to adults (not including and limited to #shares#tweets) should require hard work. The only thing money cannot buy after all, is inspiration.

It is not that one can’t get jealous of acquaintances, I do get jealous of what they know and HOW they got to know something. I just think being jealous of acquaintances does not lead to resentment, not even in the effeminate competitive types, maybe.

I don’t know if I will ever be inspiring to anyone, despite my original hopes (especially since I won’t have any friends left after one or more read this). Perish the thought of even wanting.  There are….miles to go before I sleep… and before that, life is not complete and until then, small victories may be bloated and large errors veiled. But maybe, readers are not friends. And inspiring originality is not really ‘inspiration’.

Not that small victories don’t matter either. They just matter to your real friends who should have better things to do than inspire you to be like them and also have learned to handle the natural resentment arising due to the normal levels of jealousy and competition. What we do with our id should have to do with our unique ego, not someone else’s vanity. Also, real friends maybe mythical…

P.S. (long absence from writing/ photo updates is regretted, lost a dear family member)

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