When We Came to Know Everyone... and Knew No One
We are living in strange times; we have never been more informed about each other’s news, yet less knowledgeable about each other as individuals.
We know who has traveled, who has returned, who has celebrated, who has changed jobs, who sat in a distant restaurant, and who took a photo in front of a sea whose name we do not know. The lives of others pass before us every day, leading us to believe that we are close to them, while distances that cannot be measured in kilometers may separate us from those closest to us.
We have come to know people’s news more than we know the people themselves. This is less a technical problem than a shift in the meaning of relationships.
Proximity has never meant knowing where your friend is, but rather knowing when they need you. Friendship has never meant seeing their smile, but distinguishing the sadness they try to hide behind it. Family has never been merely gathering under one roof, but that old feeling that there is someone who knows you even when you do not explain yourself.
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Today, reaching people has become easier than ever, but reaching them does not necessarily mean reaching their hearts.
We send much and speak little; we watch much and ask little; we know many details that do not concern us, while sometimes missing the few details that should have concerned us. Perhaps most dangerously, we have grown accustomed to this.
We have become accustomed to knowing the condition of those we love through their photos, reassuring ourselves about them by their appearances, and assuming that the silent one is fine because they did not say they were tired.
But people do not say everything.
There are pains that are not posted, loneliness that does not appear in photos, and people who laugh in front of everyone, only to return home wishing for just one sincere question: “How are you, really?”
Perhaps this is the true human test in the age of connectivity: not allowing the ease of reaching people to make us less attentive to them.
Technology can bring us sound and image in an instant, but it cannot grant us listening, loyalty, or presence when someone needs us.
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These are things that humans must still offer themselves. As time passes, we understand a simple truth: the value of life lies not in the number of people we have known, but in the number of people who have truly known us; those who understood our silence, preserved our absence, and stayed when staying became costly. Therefore, perhaps we need not more means of communication, but rather a restoration of the meaning of communication itself.
To ask before observing, to visit before excusing ourselves with busyness, to listen before judging, and to give those we love something that has become rare despite being unbuyable: our time.
In the end, age will not ask us how many people followed us, nor how many people we followed, but will leave us a harsher question:
How many people were close to us, whom we did not notice until they became distant?
A Kuwaiti lawyer and writer
