On RL, for the lack of anything interesting

[wiseheart]

Boring domestic stuff behind the tag - you've been warned.


Mum's turning 75 tomorrow. Yeah, we're both getting old. We had the party on Saturday already, she had five of her colleagues over, only one of them still working. We had a bit of food, the guests had a bit to drink (Mum mustn't, due to her medicine, and I'm just not the drinking type, strange for a Hungarian, but true), and they had fun. I were with them for a short time but left them to their own devices afterwards, working on my Cadfael database insted. It's going on slowly but steadily.

On Sunday, I uploaded some more of the original mythology to hiddenrealms, not that anyone would ever read it, because I won't point my students that way, the site has just too many adult stuff, but it's good to see it published, in a manner. Re-watched "The 13th Warrior" again, this time from the DVD I'd bought in Cambridge in July. Still loved it. It also reminded me of the nice time I got to spend with altariel, edge_of_ruin and the_wild_iris. Still envying those ladies for living so close to each other and being able to meet on a regular basis.

Got the usual phone-call-of-the-term from my only remaining RL friend. We don't live that far from each other, but the means of public transportation are inconvenient between us, so we stick to the phone and the occasional e-mail. Plus, we both have our Mums to be with, hers is some ten years older than mine, so we only see each other once a year, tops.

But it doesn't really matter. We can pick up the phone and go on where we've left half a year or more ago like it had been yesterday. The strange thing is, we don't really agree about most things, and still manage to get on rather amiably. Have been doing so for, oh, twenty, twenty-five years or so? So maybe, just maybe, we'll manage to keep going on a few decades longer.

We had an interesting conversation about friendship, loyalty and solidarity - things that seemed to have lost their original meaning in these times. We've made very similar experiences in this area in the last decade or so. She's still trying to make people understand what was the thing that made our youth so unique, despite a lot of nastiness we had to endure. People just don't seem to understand.

I've lived in the West for years. It was as if I'd lived on a different planet. Back then, it seemed to me that people there had lost that special sense of closeness a lot earlier. Now it seems to have gotten lost over here, too. Yeah, now we have the Internet and satellite TV and mobile phones and big, shiny cars and shopping centers, too... and we've lost something that used to make our lives worth living.

I don't think our current life standard was worth the price.

Comments

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

Here's wishing your mother a very happy 75th birthday!

We do pay a price for our modern lifestyle, one that most people don't even seem to notice. It's easier to befriend people halfway around the world than to meet and connect with our next-door neighbors. And it's not just driven by technology and materialism, but by economics: it's hard to connect with others when staying employed requires working ungodly hours and moving every few years.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

That's probably all true. But the main reason is, I believe, that we've lost the common obstacle that used to forge us tightly together. Like if you cut the cord that holds a bouquet together, and all the flowers and leaves and grass fall in every direction.

I'm not wishing back a totalitarian state or whatnot. But the simple truth is that back then, we somehow made the time for each other - and I had two jobs and additionally private students at that time. We just seem to have stopped caring, and that's really sad. We got too used to material goods (and I'm not an exception myself) for being able to give them up, and we sacrifice things in the process of keeping them that are infinitely more worth.

As for befriending people from all over the planet... I love you guys, and I wouldn't miss knowing you for the world, but if we're trying to be honest, how well do we know each other? Yes, we do have a few facts, and you can learn a lot about a person from the stories he or she writes, but it's still not the same as meeting face-to-face.

I don't think that as long as phone and e-mail exists - or even postal service, for that matter - it's really a cheep excuse for abandoning people who were once considered friends in a country as small as ours. You probably drive longer to your workplace than we'd need between two of our farthest borders.