Lurking around on the Internet is something I find myself doing when I have too much time on my hands. Jumping from articles to articles, I stumbled upon one which touches on the art of keeping in touch. It said that keeping in touch is the only way to rekindle friendships and make acquaintanceships flourish. As an introvert who has a rather small circle of close-knit friends, I thought why not try doing something extroverts would do, like sending people whom I haven’t talked to for months a random message?

Immediately, I went on a messaging spree on Facebook – a platform which I use to save my acquaintances’ contacts the way I use my phone to save my friends’. I messaged my old schoolmates, some long term online friends I made along the years and some friends that I’ve known for a couple of months. To my surprise, some replied immediately, some took a day to reply, and sadly, some never replied at all.

I started dozens of conversations with the same sentence: “Hey pal, long time no talk, how have you been?”. Some were quite surprised to hear from me all of a sudden, and I kinda liked it, I’m not sure why. But the thing that struck me was that all the responses that I got have one thing in common: they had the same three words “I’m good, thanks!”

I really wanted to say “Really, dude? I didn’t go out of my way to start a conversation with you so that you can give me a recap of your Facebook highlight reel which I have already seen enough; now tell me what really is going on in your life.” but I didn’t. Because I knew that as the conversation progressed, they would start complaining about how they don’t get paid enough, how their partner can’t corporate with them on this project that means the world to them and how much stress college is giving them.

And I’m sad that we can no longer trust the words “I’m good”. I’m even sadder by the fact that those words came from the people whom once trusted me enough to poured their feelings out to me and I to them that we formed a special bond which, nowadays, is hard to find. Now all they are are just acquaintances, whom I have polite conversations with once in awhile. Sometimes, I’d find myself thinking about these people and that one time when everything in our lives aligned so perfectly to allow us to connect on a deeper level with each other. But I guess it was just that one time.

They have moved on, and so should I.