Disposable Bonds and Digital Dreams

A Reflection on Modern Relaionships

The Season of Endings

As the summer turns rogue and arrives late to its gypsy wedding — as some call the all-so-wonderful period between the end of hot summer days and the welcome arrival of the not-so-hot early-fall nights — I began to think of endings. Why is it that all things must come to an end? While sometimes proving desirable, this necessary outcome might cause a certain amount of distress to a few poor, emotional souls, namely among the very gentle of my kin. It is astonishing how fast one can, at times, shake off a bad feeling with the elegance of a lake swan, and yet remain stuck and spiraling when it comes to a deep emotional connection with another human being.

The Many Faces of Goodbye

Just as relationships can have many faces, endings have many different reasons. This goes for those close bonds to friends whom we would consider of our own blood if it depended on the degree of closeness and willingness to act in order to accommodate the other person. It also applies to romantic relationships, in which we often tend to invest much more of our vision of what MUST be than our feeling and understanding of the other.

Romanticizing the Disposable

While everybody seems to be concerned with romanticizing their own lives — as it has recently become hip and trendy on various social media outlets — it is at another level that romantic relationships fail. While people nowadays sugarcoat, powder, and media-prep their interactions so as to capture the very idea of ‘a perfect relationship’ on camera, they also state (and act based on?) the interchangeable nature of what they have.

Our generation seems to hold a somehow deeply rooted belief that everything is disposable and that an enhanced, ultra mega pro max version of what they just disposed of is readily available right around the corner. This belief, although it might contradict the desire for a picture-perfect life with picture-perfect relationships, is so unshakable that it is almost uncanny just how surprised one can be upon discovering that what you have might ‘just be it’.

Friendship in the Age of Optics

Things are not brighter on the side of friendship either. I am starting to think that we, young people of this generation, are often less invested in searching for real friendship — as defined by the greatest pieces of classic literature — than we are in the hunt for good company.

Companionship — at least in this contemporary sense — is much less about tolerating each other, uplifting one another, and offering a helping hand to the one in need, than it is about having a good time. We seem to be obsessed with documenting the picture-perfect moments, so much so that we forget to actually experience them.

What Really Matters?

Is it possible that we are completely losing our grip on what matters in life? Could it be that we don’t put much effort into actually keeping a bond once we’ve created it?

In the midst of all the fuss about what things appear to be, exactly how much do we care about what things substantially are, or what they become?

All things considered: the motives for forming a bond, the motives for entertaining it, the moments and circumstances of its maintenance, the jealousy and competition between friends, the silent war between self-confidence and self-consciousness bursting on the surface through clumsy yet pretentious gestures.

It is a play alright, and sometimes even a masterpiece of the human ego with its underlying need for comfort and validation on top of others. Have we forgotten we are to love ourselves and love others the way we love ourselves?

At least, could we be pure enough to not subject others to this awful mise-en-scène that, I reckon, serves the purpose of convincing ourselves more than anyone else?