Many Friends Doesn't Always Equal Deep Connection

​"I wonder if it might be healthier to desire to be missed by a few when we are gone than to be liked by everyone while we are here."

I wrote those words several years ago. I've been thinking about them a lot lately, especially as I finish my memoir. I think about them because it's such a theme of the early years of my life - maybe even MOST of the years of my life - this need to be liked by everyone.

It turns out that being liked by everyone can be a great coping mechanism to deal with the reality you aren't really known by anyone. You can get very gifted at gaining popularity while at the same time becoming quite ill-equipped to get close to anyone.

Being popular doesn't always equal being connected. Honestly, how often does popularity EVER equal connection?

They are quite opposite in many ways. To be popular and well liked, we often feel pressured to portray our best sides. Even make up best sides that really aren't a side we truly possess.

Connection, on the other hand, requires us to share our "worst" sides - our failures and our flaws. It requires one to feel free to share tears as readily as smiles and laughter. It requires shared empathy and compassion as much as chest bumps and high fives.

Maybe more so.

Social media allows us to count our "friends". But it's us who have to ask, how many of those "friends" do I truly miss - how many of them miss me - when the "friends count" one day drops from 1000 to 999?

We live in a virtual world where people are appearing and disappearing at rapid rates, largely unnoticed. We are not designed to be humans who do not notice when those around us disappear.

I have reflected and wondered often about this idea of "missing". How many emotions do we feel that are more powerful than missing someone? What does it say about a person when they disappear and you spend days and months and even years grieving their disappearance?

What it says is connection. We do not miss PEOPLE in our lives, we miss all the feelings and experiences that connected us in the first place, and throughout that relationship. We do not miss the body, we miss everything that often made two bodies feel like one.

One conversation. One hug. One hand. One puddle of tears.

In writing my memoir, I've come to face over and over again that I have experienced great popularity in life, but little missing. And it has left me wondering, when I am gone, will I be remembered as well-liked by many, or deeply missed by a few.

And as I grow older, and wiser, is there anything I wouldn't do to trade the former for the latter?

We live in a world that helps us count our connections. The sad irony in that, quite often the larger that count gets, the less connected we really feel.