Where Everybody Knows Your Name, Part Two.

A week or two ago I wrote a "Cheers"-themed post on the significance of people knowing one another's names.

Today, I had a "They know my name!" experience -- six hours ago, in fact, but my heart is still warm with the memory.

I have been known to back out of group obligations when they feel like, well, obligations. Not that this dutiful worker bee minds obligations -- they establish structure, they necessitate goals, and they provide the opportunity for service. But there are times when something about the event proves overwhelming. Maybe it's that I've exceeded my limit of small talk in a given span of time and need a breather. Maybe it's that I'm experiencing other stressors and there's not enough room in the emotional boat for all of them. Maybe it's something as unvarnished as the feeling that the event in question feels perfunctory and who, exactly, benefits by my forcing myself to attend?

Also, this is the kind of thing introverts often do. I know this because a) I am an introvert and b) the wonderful Marzi Wilson of @introvertdoodles says so.

So I had politely and quietly backed out of a group that gathered for lunch every month. Although it was fun to go out to eat, I was beginning to feel that the emotional benefit for me from these gatherings was the food -- not a healthy dynamic, especially when one's health depends upon eating judiciously and mindfully. The other attendees were lovely people -- but after several months, I wasn't sensing any real connections.

Most of them had known one another for years; some had grown up together -- while I'd first come to the area from a thousand miles away 15 years ago and had spent several years in another state between then and now. In other words, no one would accuse me of being a native of the area or of the culture. Most of them had attended the same church their entire lives; I, on the other hand, was very new not only to the parish but to the Church itself.

And let's be honest -- a restaurant is not really the optimal setting for getting to know people. These gatherings usually include 10-12 people, so whether the table is rectangular or round, unless you want to yell across or down the table, your conversation partners are limited to those on either side of you.

So a few months ago I bailed. I think I used my stock excuse of "scheduling conflicts" -- which was technically true, because scheduling myself to attend these events was conflicting with my emotional state. But this was splitting hairs with the precision of a particle accelerator. I felt guilty for fabricating an excuse -- and for feeling that I needed one.

But then came Lent.

I'm new at this, but as far as I can tell, Lent is not typically the time for making new commitments that revolve around the enjoyment of food: "For Lent, I'm committed to twice-weekly Starbucks runs!" But my reconsideration of the monthly luncheon wasn't about the food -- it was about the social context surrounding it.

For Lent, I swore off Facebook and Bluesky -- not, you may have noticed, LinkedIn. The intention was great -- I wanted to stop scrolling mindlessly, and I wanted to get away from the constant temptation to enter into political discussions. So far, so good. That has gone surprisingly well, though I confess to having experienced (and given in to) the same temptation on LinkedIn.

Here's the irony. I wanted to fast from social media because I felt that it was isolating me from the business of real life. What I found, away from social media, was a different kind of isolation. Social media, it turns out, is not all scrolling and clicking and liking and reacting. Yes, it's true that the terms "friends" and "followers" on social media are too often illusory -- a game of semantics that allows you to feel more connected than you really are. But it is also true that you can have connections via social media that are no less real for being virtual.

Allow me to explain.

Twenty years ago, I had the wonderful privilege of being on the moderating team of a large online forum for homeschooling mothers. Most of our members were here in the U.S., but there were others from places as far-flung as Australia and New Zealand. We not only provided networking, information, and support for homeschooling, we were a vital resource for downtime -- offering a place to chat about everything from marriage to childrearing to cooking to health to politics to religion to books. People shared deeply personal stuff there because, over time, you came to know and trust one another. We were a family.

After a long run, the owner of the forum decided to move on. By this time, most of us were through, or nearly so, with our homeschooling journey. Lots of life changes had taken place. But we still wanted to stay connected. So a Facebook group was formed. And a significant percentage of my friends on Facebook are from the forum -- women I have known for 20 years, women I have never met in real life and couldn't pick out of a line-up, but with whom I have shared joys and struggles and laughs and tears and the wisdom that comes from living life together as you grow older.

When I gave up social media for Lent, I gave up not only that family but everyone else who is my friend only on social media. They are all "family" to me in some way. I have a small number of social media friends, but every one of them is intentional. Not one of them is incidental.

It's not that I don't have IRL (in real life) friends or family. I had coffee and a wonderful conversation yesterday with someone who is both an IRL and Facebook friend. But my personal balance of interactions between the real world and the virtual world is such that when the virtual interactions ceased, I felt it acutely. I was missing my tribe.

It was that feeling of being ambushed by my good intentions that made me realize that maybe I needed to have lunch with the local group after all.

And to my surprise, two women remembered me and mentioned a third who said she'd missed me over the past few months.

At the risk of sounding pathetically insecure, I was deeply affected by this. I imagine this was how Sally Field felt when she accepted an Oscar in 1985: "You like me!"

Truthfully, I don't know what to do about my Lenten fast from social media. (I'll save that post for another time -- I'm supposed to be cleaning the house.) I don't know if the lesson God wanted to show me was that I needed to use social media for connection, not for division -- if I've learned the lesson, is the fast over even though Lent has barely begun?

What I do know is this: we all, including yours truly, need to be where people know our name.

#community #friendship #lent #catholic