Should I have less friends?

Past week, I thought about Aristotle’s “virtue stands in the middle”. I guess my interpretation was incorrect.

During last year, I have been struggling about Facebook and their doubtful social function. From my personal experience, Facebook does not serve for maintaining relationships, but it helps me to know about how my friends are doing. Or at least, to know what they want other people to see how they are doing. Therefore, I think it is not a reliable source to being updated.

I ideated some strategies of alternative use of Facebook, like posting once per month with a general resume of what I had done, and thanking the people I had shared those moments with. It worked just once. On the other hand, the best solution I found to keep updated with my friends was writing letters. (Un)Fortunately, the mere nature of letters it is highly exclusive and time consuming, signifying the value of the relationships and the people involved on it.

Logically, the first weeks of my life in Copenhagen have been awfully busy: paperwork, flat and job hunting, create a social network, knowing how to move around… The point is I feel like I want to share my experience with my friends, with more than one. Writing a letter to each of them would have been tremendously time consuming, and due the situation I am, it seemed to me unattainable.

Trying to kill to flies in one clap, I wrote an impersonal letter and I sent it to some of my friends. Technology and e-mail allow us to make this kinds of betrayal to friendship and human relationships. In XXI century it seems that this is what we have, and maybe we should adapt to it. I cannot figure out this situation yet.

Within the variety of answers I have received to my impersonal letter the most common has been silence. Some of my friends have answer me back recounting  how is going for them; others have use instant communication to confirm the reception of the letter, show me their gladness for hearing news form me, and telling me their intentions to write me back. No hurries, no problem.

I guess those who remain silent have not receive the message, have not read it, (one said it was too long on the second paragraph), have felt offended by the lack of exclusivity of the letter, have not found time to answer me back, or have found it pointless. Anyhow, I think it is not a bad strategy to keep my distant social life alive. I found it way more personal than Facebook, where our friends are not our friends; or a blog, which is completely open and public.

Maybe the solution of my problem is having less social life, letting some of my friendships die, or communicating with people more rarely. Just to conclude, it is a pity to discover that well-intentioned attempts of caring for my social network have had these odd and no so positive consequences. I will continue looking for and building my way. Maybe I should come back to Facebook instantaneity….