When life slows down, as it has for me these past couple of days, there is time to think. Without the racing around and sticking to a schedule and the daily minutiae of life, there is time to reflect. This week's recurrent theme swimming around in my brain seems to be friendship. Must we spend time together in the flesh to be friends, to care about one another, to form a community? Nope. At least, not in the world I inhabit.
Two lovely people I know from Twitter are facing the unthinkable this week. They met and fell in love on Twitter, built a life together and now they prepare to say goodbye, many many many days, weeks and years before their time.
There is so much sadness felt by their twitter community and i have watched and participated as many who know these two beautiful people "virtually" try to comfort and hug them and each other. You just know how many tears are falling behind the computer screens. It is devastating. It is heartbreaking. It is so very human. Most of these people have not met beyond Twitter. And there is love everywhere.
I have been on Twitter for a few years now. It has only been in the last short while that it has started to feel like home. Now it feels like a place I can express myself and let others see who I am and how I think on a daily basis. When I say "my friend from Twitter" or "I met her on Twitter", I get some strange looks. Twitter folk are used to that. There is a natural suspicion of "online" relationships which is probably fairly reasonable. But the people I have "met" on Twitter are warm, funny, compassionate, intelligent, generous & wise. It is my privilege and my pleasure to call myself part of that. And it doesn't matter that I haven't met most of them. When I think about this group of people, I am so proud to say"We" and count myself among them.
We exchange information. We banter. We tell jokes. We link each other up. We ask for and receive support. We problem solve. We swap recipes. We show each other photos. We admire each other's children and cats and dogs. We share the big ideas. And the little ones. We giggle at absurdity. We come together for a cause. We donate. We rally. We rant. We wait for tiny babies to be born. We laugh. We cry. We mourn those who leave us. We love.
It is ever so real and it is ever so beautiful. We come together like this on Twitter and the world becomes a little bit more like the kind of place I want for my children.
Inspired by T & M xx
