“There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.”— Thomas Aquinas.
A few years ago, I decided that I was done with friendship. I didn’t wake up one day and suddenly make that choice. It was the result of the actions of people I called my friends; people who claimed to be my friends. was hurt so deeply that I told myself I would never be close to anyone again. I wanted to do everything on my own. After all, who needs friends when you have Netflix and Spotify? That was what I thought. For months, my new lifestyle worked. I went off social media and spent my time watching YouTube videos, reading novels and binge-watching anime. The new lifestyle was great. It felt safe. However, with time, I realized that life is better when you have people around you. I realized that just because you have been hurt by people doesn’t mean you should completely close your heart to making friends.
I decided that staying away from people wasn’t doing me any good, so I opened my heart again. I didn’t know how to make friends in the physical world, but that was when online friends came in. This brings me to today’s Hive Learners’ prompt: Online Friendships. Can online friendships replace the need for face to face friendships? Have you ever made online friends? How much did you share with them?
Hive made me realize that online friendships are preferable than physical ones. I’m not of the school of thought that online friendships do not have any flaws. Of course, they do. They have as many flaws as physical friendships. However, I still think that the complexities involved in online friendships are lesser compared to physical friendships. When I joined Hive, I made friends with people, especially in Neoxian City. Every day, I would come online to chat with them, talk about things and sometimes, we would have minor arguments. For the first few months, we weren’t friends. We were just people who came together because we had a common goal.
Then, out of these people, I became close to a few of them who made me realize that online friendships can sometimes replace physical ones. Over the past few years, these people have been influential in my life. When it comes to achieving goals, they have pushed me beyond my limits. From the moment I joined Hive, I made friends who often reminded me to write a post, power up, and sometimes even shared topic ideas with me.
Looking back, I have shared a lot of my personal experiences with my online friends that I have with friends in the physical world. I honestly think that my online friends know me better than some of my physical friends. Sometimes, when the burden of life gets too heavy to carry, these friends step in to ease the pain and the weights. They come with advice and lessons.
I wouldn’t put it that online friendships are better than physical friendships, if anything works for you, then you should go for it. Genuine friendship is difficult to find, especially in today’s world where everything feels complicated. Two people who claim to be friends sometimes talk ill about each other behind their backs. I have heard stories of people who harmed their friends out of jealousy. I have heard of people who planned the death of their own friends simply because those friends were doing better than them. These things can happen in both online and physical friendships. In the end, we just have to be careful about the people we allow into our lives, whether in the digital world or the physical one.
Thanks for reading.
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