Leave electronic world and step out into real world

MY COMPUTER calendar informs me that 18 of my friends celebrate their birthdays this month. I know three of them, and only one of them well enough to wish her a “happy birthday”. The rest are Facebook “friends” and they pop up on my screen because they are vaguely connected professionally or because somebody’s wife’s second cousin works for a bottle store and thought it would be useful to have a wine writer on his list of “friends”.

I was brought up in a friendly community and always feel it would be rather rude to shun anybody who came and asked to be my friend. So now I’m stuck with all these birthdays cluttering up my calendar and no idea how to remove them.

I sometimes think this flood of fake friends actually prevents people having real friends. It’s all very well sitting alone in an empty house trawling your Facebook pages and learning that Jessie Snook tagged a photo posted by Willie Wook and Sandra Smith commented on a post by Sam Bloop. But it’s pretty meaningless if you don’t actually know any of them. All of them tell you when it’s their birthday, though. Hooray!

I am extremely lucky to have a circle of real friends and we keep in touch with each other constantly, but we live in a fearful age when millions of people live lonely lives, afraid to venture out because of the high crime rate, dangerous traffic, the cost of almost everything and the unfriendly attitude of so many people.

I read a magazine article about loneliness recently and it described loneliness as the greatest epidemic sweeping the modern world. Medical researchers say loneliness is as bad for our health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and worse than obesity. It increases the risk of heart disease and strokes, quite apart from the mental aspect.

Loneliness is self-perpetuating. It makes you feel depressed and that makes you not want to communicate with others, so you become even more lonely.

In today’s electronic world thousands of people are lonely even when surrounded by other people. Their lives shrink down to the size of a tablet computer.

If you’re on that slippery slide to loneliness my advice would be to take life by the scruff of its neck and force yourself to get out there and meet people. It may seem difficult, but take a walk to your local library and see what’s offered.

I’ve seen invitations to join all kind of social groups, from beginners’ art classes to chess clubs, sewing circles, walking groups, writers’ classes, photography clubs and a whole lot besides.

Switch off your device for a day and get out there into the real world. It can be quite a friendly place.

Last Laugh

A little girl asked her mother: “Mom, where do babies come from?” “The stork brings them,” says her mother. Later she asks: “Where does food come from?” “It comes from farms.” “What do we do if our house catches fire?” “We call the fire brigade.” After a long, thoughtful pause, the little girl asks: “Why do we need Daddy?”