Social Butterfly

When you’ve been in this small town for more than 5 years, you tend to have the feeling of selfishness and loneliness. This small town is not bad actually because most of the facilities are available for people to use for free. This town has its own version of Coffee Beans café, softball and soccer field, futsal and basketball field, swimming pool (no bowling alley though…bummer!) and even a place to pamper yourself in greenery. This town is only 389.19 acres, with XL tower to the North, water tank to the East, 41 alpha security gates to the West and Miftakhul Jannah mosque to the South. This (I said) is Buin Batu.

Working 7 to 4 up in the hill, and back home (yes you right, it is home) to 3x4 mtsq room, 5 days a week, 365 days a year (minus the days off and holiday) could be so boring.

The first 3 years is probably the most active years of your social life, you can call yourself a social butterfly. Perching from limb to limb, from flower to another flower. Talking to people, interact with them and building your own social network. Building the network is not a rocket science, it’s all about spreading your charm, offering your kindness and friendship. Opening your arms, creating the space, allows new treasures in the form of people and experiences to come forward making more room for others to connect with… As simple as that!

Then here’s come the 5th year, when some of your friends have moved out to another project or simply just wanted to get out from this quite town, oh by the way, just so you know most activities in this town is shutdown at around 9PM. A friend of mine once said that after 5 years of living here, she’s becoming phobia of being with the same crowd, same conversation and same people.

But thanks to Larisa and TFlash that give fast (I heard TFlash is getting slower now since more people are using this service) connection to outside world. Thanks to Facebook and Twitter that allow us to connect with our family and friends outside this town. However, with that ‘luxury’ more and more advance, your time to interact with people is somehow become limited.

The busier you are, the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you are young, so it will go down to very limited and selected people, right! Socializing is not about moving from limb to limb or flower to flower anymore, but simply just sending a little note saying hello to your friend’s Facebook’s inbox.

What happen when the internet connection is down, when the earthquake in Jakarta impacting the connection (haha, not true, this is me exaggerating!), all of the sudden our life is feeling so empty. When you read the note on your computer screen saying “unable to retrieve connection to the server”, you’re feeling like screaming on top of your lung and cursing Larisa or TFlash.

See how our social life is changing these days! Or maybe is it only happens in certain small town? But I have friends who live in big cities and have the same situation. Does people ever tired of direct socializing (hmmm, not sure I’m using the right term)? Does “Dunia maya connection” steal our liberty to interact with people or friends? I do not know how to answer that, I guess it’s all up to us who is different in personality or in situation.

In the end, whether you are living in a small town or metropolitan city or whether you’re only have 10 friends or 1000 friends in your Facebook list, that doesn’t matter, as life is wonderful if we bother to appreciate the beauty of what we already have and savor the experience.