How to know what is an illusion
So much of what you ‘lurve’ every day is smoke. It is fantastical and transitory and ungrounded and illusionary. The certainty you love; imaginary. The coffee you would be useless without; replaceable. The colleagues you laugh with daily; largely unimportant. The email signature that denotes your place in the world of business; temporary. Your Facebook friends; frauds and your Twitter followers; strangers.
You aren’t alone in this predicament. In fact this predicament is overloaded with people so ‘connected’ to our networks that we broadcast what we eat for lunch, and yet so disconnected that we would be lucky to have 10 people to really rely on when the shit hits the fan.
We are so dedicated to the worship of technology and networking that we have forgotten that when it comes down to the wire they are as useful as a maxed out credit card. What is real are connections of the heart. Our families, our passions, our friends, our legacies.
We are all different, yes, but we are all human. As humans we need connection, support, love, touch, nourishment. Below is my litmus test. Only what passes the test deserve my ‘lurve’, attention and dedication all else is to be taken lightly.
The friendship is illusionary if:
- you don’t call to say ‘Happy Birthday’, but send them a Facebook message only instead
- you have never held their hand in celebration or commiseration
- you don’t share with them when your grandmother gets Alzheimer’s or you’re facing depression
- you wouldn’t fly across the country to visit them at a moment’s notice if they needed you
- you couldn’t ask them to dislodge a stuck diaphragm or drive you to a feared Doctor appointment
- you wouldn’t invite them to your wedding
An illusion is:
- something that isn’t true all the time
- something fickle or transitory
- something wouldn’t take with you to the proverbial desert island
- something based in what others think of you and not in who you are
- something that would be dwarfed by terrible news
How do you tell the difference? What is your litmus test?
1 comment
illusionary friendship: when someone doesn’t connect (phone, email, text, fb) to wish you luck for something you’ve been working on for a while that is really important but instead just casually brings it up in conversation like it’s no big deal after the fact. That is of course when you initiated the connection and they quickly follow with something insanely trivial after your response.