I guess this is the way it goes nowadays. You set up an account with Facebook, limit its access to your allowed ‘friends’ and think you are protected from intruders. But somehow somebody out there finds you and sends you a message. Given that it was a nice message enquiring something about a group I set up, I replied. As you would expect, the writer was obviously a man. However the circumstance that he has Italian origins as well, and his parents live in the same area in Italy as mine, didn’t worry me, since he lives in Australia. However these things take over and I’m never sure – although I am not so naïve as not to retain a degree of suspiciousness –which score your new e-acquaintance wants to hit. So you just keep replying politely to his apparently innocuous questions and start to expect a daily message… which I need to dilute by replying at least after 2 days.
But today he started to uncover himself using words like ‘romantic’ and ‘sexy’, or verbs like ‘visit me’ which made my hair stand a bit on end. I now need to tell him that if I go to Australia I won’t be on my own, but happily accompanied by my boyfriend.
Then I thought: why on earth would you want to meet somebody in a romantic way when she lives on the other hemisphere at the diametrically opposed end? Would you really care to embark even on a simple friendship open to something else knowing that it takes at least 24h of travel to reach her? Are we so lonely nowadays that we do not find anyone suitable around us? Or perhaps are we working so madly that we don’t find the time to go out and meet the one for us, and resort to the electronic resources for the search? Is the web dating a self-selecting tool for people with certain characteristics (shyness, lack of time… to mention a few)?
Perhaps mine are just rhetorical questions, of which I know already the answer. And the point here is that it works for somebody, and not for others. One of my best friends a few years ago met a lover electronically. Same situation: my friend was in the UK, the potential partner in Australia. The Aussie came over to the UK to meet my friend, and it was mad love at first sight. So they lived together in the UK for one year until they had a mad row and the Aussie packed her stuff again leaving in no time.
Would I do the same? No thanks…
For me there is no comparable taste to the one of going to a party or a dinner with many friends and friends of friends or entering in a pub or a trendy bar and meet the eyes of somebody in bones and flesh… Face-to-face contact has no substitutes for me.
1 comment:
El mundo da vueltas y vueltas, creemos ser el animal más perfecto, viajamos tanto en el espacio sideral como en el interior de la tierra, inventamos y construinos obras ingenieriles geniales, desarrollamos instrumentos tecnológicos fantástico, que nos da aun más orgullo como hombres y parece que no logramos compartir, en todos los sentidos: fisico, emocional, intellectual, espiritual, nuestra existencia con alguien; siempre, juntos o separados, solos o acoplados, existe una de soledad que a veces nos agobia. ¿Es este nuestro destinos a pesar de ser animales sociables? ¿Se han complicado las cosa en esta "sociedad liquida", como Zygmut Bauman la define, en lugar de semplificarla? Preguntas de este tipo son recurrentes y cada vez encuentran una respuesta dictada por la circunstancia.
Leyendo tu escrito me puse a pensar de que somos las caras especulares, tu y yo, de esta época que nos toca vivir. Emigrantes o exiliados por algo que nuestros padres han tenido en un único lugar. El amor y la profesión. Como celula perdida vago en un globo buscando respuestas que quizás no encontraré y entonces me pregunto, y es la última por hoy, ¿será más importante el fin o la misma busuqeda?
Post a Comment