Standing in the parking lot of the supermarket and talking with an old friend (because that’s what adults do I guess) we lamented the fact that we hadn’t seen each other at a party in a very long time. In that very moment, I posited the idea that no one throws parties anymore is because we are all in touch via social media, and there’s less of a need to get together. There was something sad in the realization and admission.
For many years, there was a series of parties that constituted our holiday social season. It began with a pre-Thanksgiving get-together at Bob’s in the heart of Albany. We would cram ourselves into his apartment overlooking Washington Park and kick off the holidays at a Friendsgiving gathering of sorts, before we all headed off to our respective family fiascos. Then Rob M. and we would coordinate weekends for our respective holiday parties, and finally Rob C. would close out the year and the season with his New Year’s Eve bash.
This past Christmas there were no parties. Yet we’ve all been in touch via FaceBook or Twitter or Instagram so it doesn’t feel like we’ve missed anything. In fact, it feels like I know more about my friends’ comings and goings than I did when we would regularly go out and see people. There is a continuous social gathering online whenever we decide to plug in, a perpetual party that takes place in all corners of the world and at all hours of the day or night. It offers instant if tenuous connection, a joining of the masses, and a communal get-together that gives us all a false sense of social camaraderie. For the introverted among us, it is in many ways a relief – a way to be social without actually being social.
Yet part of me misses those parties, and it’s why we haven’t entirely given up on them just yet. There’s something about seeing friends in person that will never be as nourishing or enriching as connecting via text or FaceTime. There is an intimacy and immediacy, and the shared moment that brings two people together in a way that no computer or phone screen could ever replicate. The richness of a three-dimensional being, the scent of someone’s sillage, the way that eyes look back at you – these things can’t be conveyed no matter how many online lookers gaze your way.
So here’s to the people who still party, the people who still bring other people together, and the personal connection that reminds us we are not alone in the dark, staring at a phone or a computer, lost in the land of virtual mediocrity. Go on now, get out of here. Close this page and whatever device you’re reading it on and look around you. Stand up and stretch, breathe deeply in of the world around you. That is what’s real. That is what matters.
