Losing people

mnc_hnn

This is the second time I am going through a bereavement of a significant family member and I have to say I am still utterly shocked at the way my so called Coptic friends (and even some non Christian friends) have completely ignored what happened. I did not expect much from people this second time around - even if it was a mere message or social media comment on the very clear announcement would suffice. These were people I considered friends and ones I supported in any way I could. 

People are very cruel and most have no empathy and lack even a hint of sympathy. I don’t know why I still get shocked by this. I can never just ignore someone’s bad news without at least a polite comment of condolences. 

I am deeply ashamed to have wasted moments of my life labelling people as friends. It is very true that people will show you who they really are during significant life events. 

Where is Christ like behavior? Mourn with those who mourn? The pain of feeling so alone in difficult moments like this is overwhelming.

mabsoota

may God comfort you and give your relative peace in the paradise of joy.

i wonder if part of the problem is the way we perceive social media.

i once had a fb account (back in 2010, yes i am that old!) for several months and had started wasting a lot of my life scrolling to the bottom of the page (took me a while to figure out there was not supposed to be a 'bottom' and you should stay on line half your life at least!)

and then i had a big exam so i had to cut off completely because it was too addictive (even though i was looking at photos of my friends' friends' friends who i was never going to meet and keeping updated with people's tooth brushing status or (even worse) their scores on computer games.

the whole think about social media is that it processes people's tooth brushing episode, master's degree and daughter's death with all the same urgency and importance, so that all things seem to be equally interesting.

and people 'can't' leave it as then they will be 'left out' and it will be (apparently) the end of the world.

but i really wanted to pass my exam (which i did) so i put an announcement on my page to my hundreds of fans (about 15 friends and 5 friends of friends) that i would leave in 1 month.

i logged in once a week (was trying to be good), ready to reply to the hundreds of heart broken messages about my imminent cyber departure.

but after the month passed i got NOT ONE single message!

i had been wasting my time posting (vaguely) intelligent thoughts every 3-4 days, that probably no one was interested in, mainly because they were busy posting their 'intelligent' thoughts and looking at their hundreds (!) of fans and building up their egos.

the other thing about social media is that some people are offended if they get a group message instead of a personal message. or they just assume you are not really interested in their individual responses.

so these may be part of the problem, maybe your friends have forgotten (or the younger ones have not learnt) how to respond in these circumstances.

after all, no one has invented a 'really upset to hear your absolutely terrible news' emoticon.

it doesn't work like that.

these things work best when there is a small number of close friends, not a big number of distant friends, and then the small number all have time to call you or visit you.

as it is, they probably all have so many 'friends of friends' that they are seeing death notices every few weeks from one 'friend' or other, and so have run out of emotional energy for the times when it really matters.

maybe try calling 1 or 2 really important people and just letting them know you are really sad right now and hopefully they will have time to put down their mobile device and tune into you.

remember God is always tunes in, meet him in tasbeha, liturgy and prayer and may the prayers of the saint also be with you

mnc_hnn

Thank you Mabsoota, you made some great points for reflection