Sending my hope to all my Facebook friends that you have a pleasant and loving Christmas. I had a great time with you in 2025. You made me laugh and cry and question and wonder. You made me think and think and think again. And sometimes you made me ask myself why I ever thought my thoughts in the first place.
You made me frustrated and surprised, infuriated and disappointed. You introduced me to ideas that wouldn’t have found their way into my mind if it weren’t for you. I met people I would never have known. This year I got to know the poetry of the brilliant and inspiring, Andrea Gibson. Unfortunately, it was in her dying that she came to my attention. But I thank my Facebook friends for introducing her to me. If you don’t know the work of this wonderful woman, look her up…Will the afterlife be harder if I remember the people I love, or forget them? Either way, please let me remember.
You, my Facebook friends, are relatives I would never hear from otherwise. You are friends from school, from Sunday School, from work, from the community, from politics, from knitting interests, from my travels, from my children’s lives, from the writing world.
You are friends of friends. Most of you I will never meet. Or, at least, never meet again.
I join some of your political conversations. I say what I think either in support or disagreement. Often in those conversations I refine my thinking or amend my ideas or confirm my opinions, depending on what others are saying. Thank you for that. In no other world could I have those conversations with such a diverse group of people.
It is not completely true what they say about social media confidence…that it’s easy to be your worst self and to say things you’d never say face-to-face. Perhaps it’s true for people who don’t use their name and who hide behind their Facebook mask. I know it takes courage to publicly state what you believe to be true. I have met people for the first time who say “I know who you are. I read what you said about…on Facebook.” That is accountability with wheels.
Almost always I refrain from exclaiming, “You have got to be kidding. You can’t possibly think that!!!” Although on a rare occasion I express a muted sense of despair.
Most of the time I am ignored, sometimes I’m tolerated and, once in a while, I am appreciated. I can count on one hand how many times I have been disrespected. On one spectacular occasion I responded to an old friend who now lives in Alberta. She was cheering for Trump’s 2024 election win. It was her site and her right to celebrate. But I had one of those “You have got to be kidding,” moments. I squeaked out a muted contrary response. I was pounced on by her Trump-loving friends with very unmuted name calling. I apologized to her for triggering such nasty comments. She apologized to me for her friends. She took the thread down and we both learned a few things.
Only once have I defriended someone. I didn’t know the woman. She posted several times a day. Her comments ranged from full-out anti First Nations racism to seemingly benign comments about First Nations but ones that were pierced through with racist innuendo and snide jokes. At first, I engaged with her. Then it became clear there was no point. But somehow the algorithm would not let go. She took up way too much space, so I deleted her.
There is so much to bemoan about Facebook: the algorithms, the advertisements, the billionaire ownership, the trolls, the nasties, the nonsense.
But. For me. For now. Have a pleasant Christmas, my Facebook friends. My world is more interesting because of you. Thank you for that.
And. Now. Do I wish you a Happy New Year? It seems out of place these days. To me it sounds a bit vacuous given the deep anxieties most of us are experiencing. I do hope you find happiness in the coming year. But more than that. My wish is that 2026 brings a new sense of ‘us’ and that our insatiable desire to pursue out individual happiness and defend our individual ‘rights’ becomes boring and so, so 2025.
My wish for 2026 is that we reimagine being human. Being people. Not in a fist punching “We the people” sort of way. But in a “let’s be good to each other” sort of way. In a “here I’ll go first” sort of way.
