Monday, January 29, 2007

Young, single and mobile

One of the perks of being young and single is the ability to pick up and move whenever and wherever, right?

I'm not so sure about that. In the last year about half a dozen close friends -- the girls I ate lunch with, the couples I called on Friday to see what the weekend plans are -- have done just that. This weekend I said see ya to one of my best friends in town, who is headed to DC. And, quite frankly, while I'm really good at packing up and leaving (I might have left myself if it weren't for a certain guy), I don't handle being left behind very well.

Granted, part of this is my own fault for having lots of friends in the military - they're going to leave. Others have gone on to pursue bigger and better opportunities, and I'm happy that they're all doing well. Thanks to e-mail and free long distance cell phone plans, we've done a decent job of staying in touch. But it doesn't replace girls' nights with a bottle of wine or meeting after church for lunch.

All this moving makes me wonder about the idea of community in our generation. Are we just better at connecting with people and adapting to new situations? Or has the Internet really replaced those sort of geographic parameters that "community" once implied? And are these changes a good thing?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

hhmmmmm...I'm old, married and somewhat STILL mobile...guess that keeps me from posting here. No really, I can remember the days when moving from place to place and sitting in a rental truck for 28 hours straight (I stopped for gas, beef jerkey, orange soda, a flat tire on the ole' Fiero GT being towed by the U-Haul, and occasional bathroom breaks) came easy. No more...it takes an act of Congress or a really good band to get me out of the house these days.

Tom said...

I miss you too.