My Love For The Typewriter

How Whatsapp Taught Me To Let Go

Like many of my peers of this generation, Whatsapp is my life. I probably communicate more words everyday through that app than I do out of my own mouth. And you'll know you're the same when its notification buzz takes over your entire mind and body whenever it comes up, whatever time of day it is. I think I need it so much so that I feel physically and mentally unsafe without it being within arm's reach.

As much as I hate to admit it, I'd like to think that I wouldn't go crazy without my phone, but who am I kidding? I can't put it down. And one fateful, tragic night, a bug had caused my phone to reset completely and wiped its memory clean - my Whatsapp conversation history being one of the unfortunate casualties. I can hear the gasps now. Yes, I am slowly recovering from the emotional trauma. I'd like to thank you all in advance for your thoughts and prayers through these tough times.

Jokes aside, I genuinely felt sad and frustrated about it. It's stupid, and most likely a somewhat overreaction. But to think I had lost all the conversations I've had with all my friends and family really struck me hard. All the jokes, catching up, and heartfelt discussions... just gone. Erased forever and lost in the digital ether, never to be recovered again. How could I ever relive those connections I shared with all these people?

My mum is my biggest subscriber.

But this made me ponder: if I could, would I? Prior to the tragedy, I always had those conversations stored on my phone. Did I ever once go back to them? Truth be told, hardly, but yes - for one particular person, often even. But no one else. And because, embarrassingly, it was the prime example of me living in the past.

See, when we have normal face-to-face interactions, we live in the moment. We experience people and we experience life. We create memories, and that bit of nugget of information is stored in our imperfect brains. And when we choose to relive those moments, we do so through whatever we can mentally recall. However, that recall is blurry. It's filtered by our emotions and faded by time. And every time we turn back and look again, some detail is changed or missing. Fiction becomes fact, and assumptions become the truth.

With Whatsapp, those moments are captured perfectly, word for word. Nothing is misconstrued, and perhaps it is this immaculate snapshot that I felt I lost. But the only time I missed it was when I thought I had nothing left in the present. For the majority of my Whatsapp contacts, I never once went back to what we said. But for this one person, reading back previous conversations meant I could perfectly relive moments of the past.

But that's not how life works. Life is transient. Moments come and go, and the beauty of the world is that nothing is permanent. Stagnancy is boring. We progress with all the people we know, for better or for worse, and that is what makes our individual relationships so unique. We go from strangers to family. We talk, and we learn, and we grow. We love, and we hate, and then we love again. We don't cycle seasons; we age.

Living in the past is no way to live at all, no matter what tinted filters you see it through. To truly appreciate your history is to live the present with the context of the past. What has happened before will always be important, but it shouldn't be where your head and heart is at, because that is something you will never return to. The good news, however, is that there is so much more in the future - better things and worse things. And you'll never find out if you're stuck in the past.

I feel like a lot of my friendships are based on mutual insult.

So here's the twist: my Whatsapp got wiped months ago. And that day, I was honestly at my wit's end. It really ruined my week. But it happened again about a week ago (maybe the real lesson is that I need a new phone). And yes, it annoyed me that I lost some pretty awesome pics, but you know what? It didn't suck nearly as much. I may have lost some text, but I didn't lose any of my relationships. My friends and family are still very much around; they didn't get deleted in the process. And I'll make new conversations and new memories, and everyday, I'll create something worth remembering.

I realised I stopped reading back my conversations with that one contact since the first time I lost my Whatsapp, because I learnt that even if the text exists, the conversation doesn't. It was fleeting, just like everything else. It was created at the time, and it finished at the time. And now, I'll start and end new conversations with that contact about the present. I won't soon forget our past, but if only to build a new future.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, understand that nothing can capture the past so perfectly that it extends its existence - an app, photo, memory, or otherwise. I'm not saying you should completely neglect your past, but don't let it stop you from living in the present, like I did.

Also, back up your Whatsapp history every so often.

How Does This Friendship Thing Work?

Hello once again, loyal reader.

Boy, is it dusty around these parts of this blog. It has been a while, hasn't it? Glad to see you have found your way back safe and sound. Come - we must huddle around these warm words as they come still fresh from the keyboard. But hurry! Who knows how long this harvest will last, before we must brace for yet another hibernation during the next famine of blog entries?

Since I'm currently on holiday, I have had the luxury of some downtime to bring back some life to this flaccid blog of mine. They say it happens to all bloggers at some point, that it's not a big deal, and that every reader has had a blogger go through this type of predicament. I have to say, this lack of vitality has certainly left me feeling rather embarrassed and ashamed. Maybe there's a pill for just this type of problem.

Having now spent a jam-packed week of catch-ups with friends, I've been thinking a lot about how friendships work for adults. For me, it takes that level of conscientious thought to really process something like that. They say you shouldn't fix what isn't broken, and I certainly haven't had any reason to question the relationship I share with my friends. But if that's the case, when do you see improvement if you don't ever ask for more?

Being at school has taken up such a big part of my life. From kindergarten through to university, it has, for better or worse, taken up a lot of my waking moments (and sleeping ones too, if we're going to count lectures). And almost all my closest friends I have met throughout these school years. But that's pretty much a given for most people I would think. When you're stuck and confined within certain walls, the tightest of friendships form. The only better breeding place for friendships than at schools are either in the army or in prison: take your pick.

However, I'm no longer in school, and neither are my friends. As we've all come to discover at our own pace, working life is very, very different indeed. Simply put, it's a lot harder to see each other. Free time is scarce, and even when it comes by, trying to fight fatigue is a whole other hurdle. You really have to make that extra effort to see one another, even if just to catch up.

I suppose I have a rather skewed perception. My best friends aren't even in the same country as me, let alone the same city. Yet undoubtedly, they are still my best friends. With them, it is by no casual effort that we get to spend some time together, whether that's on the phone, online, or (when all the planets align) in person. But it never really feels like an effort either. I don't necessarily agree that just because we are such close friends, that it means we don't need to try to stay as such. In fact, it takes a lot of proactive endeavour. It's rather a point of feeling that they're worth it. Differing time zones can be an irritating annoyance, but a few early mornings or a couple of late nights are honestly negligible. Spending time with family is very important indeed (something I will never forego), and it's what the holiday seasons are for, but to me, these people are a part of my family. And handwritten letters and planned gatherings might be nice, but for the most part, a simple text will suffice to let someone know you're thinking of them. With whatever excuse life might provide, there's always a way around it if you want it badly enough. You make the sacrifices, you adapt to the circumstances, and you just make it happen. Because if they're not worth the effort, then who is?

I won't sit here and lie and say that I don't miss the ease of being friends at school. They're never that far away, and for the most part, are looking for a distraction from the mundanity of school work. But since then, I've learnt that even though it takes that extra effort, if these people are meant to be in my life, then we'll make it happen from either end. I am the grumpiest person to wake, but I will always lend a willing ear at any time of night. There are no confessions too guilty or too pathetic that would ever cause me to pass judgement on. I will never pretend to know that things will be okay, but I can promise I'll be around when they're not. And I am only able to do these things because I know, in absolute security, that my friends will do no less for me, no questions asked.

Even though I've had these things on my mind (and this post in the drafts section) for a while, I feel that my holiday back home has really made me think twice about this. We all very quickly realised the drastic social and financial differences between work life and school life, but having to actually make an effort to keep friends? Not always so obvious.

The truth is, yes, it gets harder to maintain close friendships. But never forget that there's someone at the other end willing to try just as hard as you will. I am in no way the perfect friend, and I hope that I can rid myself of the bad habits that distances myself from my friends. Whether by conscious thought or by natural effort, I want to put more in. If these people are strange enough to want me around in their lives, I'm going to make damn well sure that I try my best to earn that place - even though I know they'd never ask of that from me.

So from me to you, I hope that the little annoyances in working life don't get in the way of the solid foundations in friends you've formed throughout your school years. Because I'll be damned if now isn't the stage in our lives we need them the most.