In Continuum.

Most of my friends, most of our friends, probably have internet aliases on your MSN contact list. Let's see, I have friends on my contact list who are also known as the Greek Goddess, the grummy bear, the Girl Next Door, and the STINKY to name a few. These friends of mine exist in my computer as nicknames, virtual aliases they are known as on the internet. You don't think about these friends most of the time in your everyday lives. For about half a second, you think about them in your head as they come online, and your brain goes through the possible to-do list and see if any of them matches with the person that just logged on, all within that mere half a second. When the processing is done and no result comes up, the little blue box shrinks back into the bottom of your computer screen, you go on surfing the internet and your friend seizes to exist anymore for the rest of the day. That usually happens whenever someone logs on to MSN, but what about blogs? I have a couple of friends who are linked to my blog, I check them out every once in a while. Although they exist for more than half a second on average, they never usually last longer than the length of the new blog entry. Someone had a bad day, someone had a great day, someone had a lukewarm day, while somebody else posted something so vague that you can't tell their moods altogether. 

I have just described how we exist in each others' lives, and I speak the truth. It's not because we are horrible friends, not because we are friends who cannot care less about each other. But when you are not in each others' face 24 hours a day, an alias on the internet or a blog here and there is as good as it gets for the most of us. Anyway, you never actually know what is going on in somebody else's life until you ask them, unless they are as frank as me on my blog entries. Most people aren't as vocal, they prefer to keep things on the down low. A seemingly emotional MSN nickname, a double-edged blog entry, or simply a series of emotionally driven love songs on their playlist shown on the contact list. It could be anything, really, anything could signify that that person is having a crummy day, anything could bump that person up a few notches on your "existential" list of friends. However, more often than not, people are going to brush these little alarms off as false alarm. "It's probably nothing", you'd reason with yourself. "Don't be a busybody". That doesn't make us horrible people, that doesn't make us cold-hearted human beings. It is just the way the culture has been shaped, the way we have been taught to not stick our noses into businesses other than our own. 

It's true, we promote a sense of individuality in a country that is supposedly boasts on its collectivism culture. As a whole, we are pretty united, as you might have already noticed during those grotesque National Day parades. But in Singapore's context, it is also pretty easy to ignore the death of a neighbor until two and a half weeks later when the smell of decomposition becomes too foul to bear. We are collected as one, but we are still individual units in this society. We haven't been trained to care too much for one another, because we have been taught to be career driven, to cover your own ass, to put your things together before you help somebody else. Even in those instructional videos you see in airplanes, they usually tell you to put on your own oxygen mask before helping with your child's. There's something very wrong here, when the women and the children usually get off the sinking ship first. Are we missing our priorities here? Not exactly, we are just programmed to care for ourselves first and find reasons to think that others are just going through a typical bad day, if it is a bad day at all. "It's just a song lyric", some people might say. I have told myself the same things before, does that make me a horrible person, or a friend? 

As recent as last night, a friend of mine told me that she was feeling "turdish", or "awful" as we'd put it. A friend of hers died in a car crash in a foreign country a month ago, give or take. This friend was supposed to get married to a common friend of theirs, and everything was set to happen back then, just waiting for him to come back to Singapore for the big day. Of course, when she read about her "missing him", she didn't actually think that it meant anything more than just a long distance relationship thing, with her being in Singapore and him in a foreign country. It was only a month later when she found out what that friend of hers meant when she said that she "missed him", and that it was more than just a love sick, sort of thing. She blamed herself for not acting on her guts, when she could have "been there" for that friend a month ago when she must have needed that kind of care and concern. Now that it has been a month since that fateful day, she feels awful for not acting upon her gut feeling. Still, does that make a horrible person as well? Does that make her any less of a friend? 

I don't think so, I really don't. I've been watching a lot of House lately, and he is right. Death changes everything, I suppose even something something as definite as death has the ability to create new beginnings for us, the living. I suppose when you are met with the death of somebody you used to know, especially the ones who were close by not quite close enough, you always feel like you could have done more in his life, that you could have been more of a friend for that person. I know, because I have felt the same when my own friend died in the motorcycle accident a little more than a year ago, and the most I could do back then was to visit him in the hospital just before he passed away. It was strange, the emotions that went through my head, the thought of how I could have done a lot more to be his friend and everything else. I wasn't alone with that feeling, everybody who stood in the hospital hallway felt the same too. It's this thing about death, it gives life lessons to all the other people who remains behind. It just goes to show just how vulnerable we are in life, how much time we have until we meet our own ends eventually. 

They always tell you that life is short, but I suppose it is never too short to tell a friend that you give a shit. After that incident, I've developed a sense of paranoia when it comes to suspicious looking MSN nicknames or blog entries that may point to something a whole lot worse than it is on face value. I even get paranoid when my family members are taking half an hour longer to get home than they promised on the phone. I can't help but picture them in some horrible car accident somehow, knock on wood. Of course, they usually come home in one piece, and with enough breath in their lungs to complain about being stuck in traffic. It usually gives me a sigh a relief when I hear the front door being kicked open, or the thought of knowing that they are just down the street at the mall to pick up some grocery. It is comforting, even if the paranoia keeps me on high alert most of the time. It's silly at times, if you think about it, but the accident that happened to my friend injected that sense of paranoia in me. I know how vulnerable the people around me are to death, how vulnerable I am at the very same time. 

The same goes to my friends, even if their emotionally choked blog entries are really just talking about a missing pet or a failed mid-terms paper. In fact, I have shown my concern over what was supposed to be the lyrics to a song that they were listening to. It usually draws awkward laughter from the both of us, and I suppose most of them are going to think of me as some nosy friend with nothing better to do most of the time than to stick his nose into the business of others. That may be true, since the reason behind doing so is a rather selfish one. It isn't so much about what really is happening in my friends' lives, but the fear of regret that bugs me every time I see a nickname like that. I have regretted in the past for not being a better friend, and hated myself even more for not being able to reverse that. It is, however, never too late to show a random friend that you give a shit about what is going on in his or her life. Sure, it does seem pretty nosy to do so, but it calms my soul to know that I have made the initiation at times, to know that I was there. 

Ignorance of someone else's presence in your life is only going to induce regrets in the future, if you have a conscience. You take the existence of your friends for granted, thinking that they'd be there for you for the rest of your life. Let's wait until you are at the age whereby you are ticking off the dead friends off your phone book, then you'd understand the kind of guilt that goes through your head when you can never be more of a friend to somebody else. We have neglected and ignored people in our lives, be it a conscious effort or otherwise. To those friends whom you really consider to be special, it doesn't hurt to drop by every once in a while to check up on them. Of course, I do not imply that they are patients of some deadly disease in a ward, but a simple "Are you alright?" is nice, at least to me. Ignorance is bliss at times, but not when someone dies, it changes everything. 

So, it is an easy choice for me: paranoia or ignorance? Sure, with paranoia, I might end up having less time to sleep at night, or worry myself too much about little things like, whether or not I locked the door or if I left the stove turned on. Paranoia could, in fact, cause me to be needlessly panicky over the most trivial of things, but it isn't going to hurt to know that you are paranoid for the welfare of a friend. If I have to lose sleep to think about whether or not a friend or a loved one is doing good in his or her side of the world, I'd gladly do so. Because you never know, you really never know. Life isn't anything worth living if you are going to live in the guilt that sprang from your utter ignorance. That, I have figured, and I shall stick to that. It doesn't make you a bad person, my friend. A bad person would be somebody who feels anything but what you are feeling right now. It's never too late to start giving a shit about somebody else, so let's begin with the first alias on your MSN contact list for starters, and we'll work out way from there.