Keeping in Touch

One of the reasons I started this blog is because I've become increasingly poor at keeping in touch with family and friends. I'm acutely aware that a blog is not a solution to the problem so much as a sop to my conscience, but it's a start. It has also turned out to be a catalyst for some self examination on why I'm so lousy at maintaining contact with people I care about. I know I'm not alone in this, either; everybody falls out of touch with friends and family.

But why? What is so hard about reaching out to people, especially in this internet age?

For me, with some friends, it can be a self-reinforcing thing. The longer you stay out of touch with someone, the more remote your respective experiences become and the harder it is to contemplate explaining your life to that person when you finally do connect. There's just too much catch-up sometimes, it seems. With others, it's almost the opposite phenomenon: you're so close that there is never any need to explain. Whenever you speak to that person, it's like no time at all has passed. But that can lead to complacency, where you subconsciously start to think (wrongly) that the relationship requires no maintenance. You become, in a word, lazy.

Then there's the old 'I'm too busy', but that is perhaps the lamest excuse of all. If you're too busy to have relationships, your life has some serious priority issues.

So why do we fall out of touch? I don't know, but I'm increasingly persuaded that there are no good excuses. And you can all hold me to that.