“Because I don’t care what people had for lunch,” said an
acquaintance recently in telling me why he hadn’t joined Facebook.
I had not asked. The people I know who avoid Facebook have
my full admiration. I myself once said I wouldn’t join it until I was managing
the feat of keeping up with the New York Times seven days a week, but I caved long
before reaching that goal. Most days, Facebook is like my virtual water cooler.
My work life consists of hours sitting by myself in an empty house writing;
Facebook provides the same kind of escapist chit-chat that I used to find from
my co-workers when I worked in a regular office full-time.
But sometimes Facebook is weighty, and
then too it can be like a day at the office. People do bring their milestone
events and news to work, after all, and now the same is true of Facebook.
Yesterday, my Facebook news feed covered the gamut in terms of what my friends
had to share. One had just bought her first house, a pictureseque little
bungalow in Burlington, Vermont. Another had been invited to speak at a
prestigious writers’ conference where she once studied as an aspiring novelist;
now, with two successful books to her name, she’s invited back to share her
expertise. Another was watching her 8-year-old daughter play the first softball
game of the season. And another friend posted a photo of her late husband.
Yesterday would have been his 44th birthday, and the photo showed
him a few years ago with a birthday cake in front of him and both daughters in
his lap. I’d seen this same snapshot of a joyful dad with his two adorable
children once before: it was part of a slide show montage shown at his wake.
It was one of those days when Facebook felt like real life being
run in fast-motion. Ordinary things were going on but with overwhelming speed:
accomplishments, losses, celebrations, anxieties. It was upsetting. And yet it
was also authentic. By dinnertime, sixty-eight people had clicked “Like” on the
photo of my friend’s late husband. Some of them were close enough to her that
they would have known it was his birthday even without Facebook, but most of us
would not have, including me. This was our chance to acknowledge her loss once
again, and I hoped that felt reassuring to her and not invasive.
By the end of the day I felt a little bit overwhelmed by so
many people’s different kinds of news, so much more information than I would
have been privy to on an ordinary day in the pre-Facebook era. But for those of
us who have opted in to this particular virtual universe, this is part of life
now. We all share in each other’s news in a kind of super-accelerated realtime.
And yes, occasionally there are posts about who’s eating what for lunch. But given
the invitation to share people’s news, both good and bad, I’ll accept. We’re
all here for each other. We always have been, but this makes it all the more
evident, at those very times in life when it’s most important to realize it.
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