“And as a few strokes on the nose will make a puppy head shy, so a few rebuffs will make a boy shy all over. But whereas a puppy will cringe away or roll on its back, groveling, a little boy may cover his shyness with nonchalance, with bravado, or with secrecy. And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist—or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it.”

― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Everyone likes to be liked. It’s important for most of us to have a good circle of beloved people around us. Some of us need more attention, and some of us need less. Some of us just need a few friends who are a well of sustenance in our daily world. And some of us like a lot of “likes” from many folks about our lives throughout each day.

I was reminded today that, while I always hold I am a person who just has and needs a few friends, I am a little more dependent than that. I tell myself I don’t need a whole lot of people around me because I am an introvert and I’m just good with a handful of sojourners joining me down this walk of life. And yet, Facebook reminds me otherwise.

When I was in high school, I was voted Homecoming King my senior year. I honestly often look at that year in my life and wonder how THAT happened. I know it happened in part because during my sophomore and junior years, I underwent an internal revolution, and trying to climb out of a deep pit of self-depreciation and despair, I just decided to forget myself and love whoever I was around. I think for those two years I didn’t truly didn;t think much about who I was, or what other people thought of me. Fueled by lots of time in Scripture and Jesus’ admonition to just love whoever we were around, I practiced his simple teaching pretty well. And it meant whoever I was around, I just tried to talk to and encourage and be a friend to.

Before that shift within though, I’ve always been a pleaser, and someone heavily dependent on the affirmation of others. Introversion feeds that to an extent. If you don’t decide to just ignore the opinions of others and become an island, you want to be affirmed, and I’ve always had that bent in me- to want to be affirmed, to be valued for something I’ve had to offer, to be seen as valuable.

But during my senior year, when I was sitting on stage a lot year end for being just a super guy (popularity swells for various reasons), something happened inside of me. Jesus’ teaching went quiet within me. I was receiving a lot of attention, and yet I wasn’t completely sure why. I was a school celebrity, known by most, and yet me, that self-aware place inside of my heart, suddenly felt as alone as I ever had. I was popular, but I felt a great gulf between my inner life and many in my class I wanted to be accepted by. It was kind of like being heavily loved, but lightly liked. I had a good brand, but not many friends.

In college, my humanness returned, and that friendly sheen wore off. Loneliness and my returned sense of inadequacy led me back into my introvert ways. A quiet cynicism and thin trust of others settled into my heart. And now at a new school, a commuter off campus, all of my fans from a year or two before were gone, and I was a plain guy, sitting alone in classes, wondering inside who I was and what I was about.

When Facebook came along, in some ways it was like a big life reunion. You found yourself finding and friending as many people as you could from your past, in part to just see how they were doing. You friended some because you hoped you’d become more significant to them now than you might have been in the past. I have to admit- a number of my high school connects were done with that aim. I hoped to gain the friendship of people now that I wanted to be “cool” to back then.

In the early rush of joining Facebook, people accepted other people easily, with few questions asked. I was elated to find myself connected to a number of these people I wanted to like me. Some weren’t on Facebook much- but that’s okay. We we’re Facebook friends. The symbolic relationship was there.

It’s been interesting to me over the last year or two, though, to periodically come across a Facebook conversation featuring one of my friends, and on the other end of it is a person you thought was on your contact list- they were at one time- and now they aren’t. The button at the top of their profile clearly says “+ Add Friend”. Somewhere along the way they decided whatever I was saying or not saying in my life did nothing for them, and they quietly unfriended me. Somewhere aloing the way, they decided to clip me out of their consciousness.

The clips I recognize and feel the most are former high school classmates, because in my stunted personal growth, these are the people I was most involved with in my life- and at that age when we were all kind of waking up, it was many of these people I wanted acceptance and validation from.

In a number of these cases, the discomfort of release is compounded by the fact they retained their relationship with my brother, who they friended at some point through our web of associations, not really knowing him in high school. There are a few of those particular rejections I’ve discovered and felt truly baffled and stung by. I’m not a big politics or religion guy on Facebook, pushing parties or policies, or perpetually pontificating.

But the 10 year-old pleaser in me, looking for the affirmation and validation of others, is bothered by these.

It’s a good thing I’ve grown up and discovered I don’t need people. And that you strangers can’t hurt me with your behaviors. Such a small scale rejection- pffft. Who cares. I doesn’t matter to me.

As my face burns bright red at such surprises on that stupid site. Because I still care too much about what strangers think of me- who don’t think of me.

You may not have known me, but I wish you had. Because I always wanted to know you.

Oh well. It’s silly, really. Social media is not exactly real life- kinda like high school. I guess I need to come back to the 46 year-old me. As Paul said, “When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.”

I guess it’s time to post another Cubs update.

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Image Credit: “Crouching Tiger, Hidden George” by popejon2 by popejon2 via Flickr. Creative Commons license.