The Virtual World

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."

We all have friends. Friends we made in school, in college, at work...
However, we all seem to be so busy in our everyday life that we hardly have time to meet up with our friends very frequently. When we go to college, we make new friends and we do not have time to meet our old school-friends. We move on with our new life and perhaps talk to them only to wish them on special occasions - sometimes, not even that! Sometimes we move to a new city and it becomes very difficult for us to be in touch with all our old friends even though there are so many social networking sites these days.
Apart from these friends, we also have online friends. People with whom we have some common interest - we are members of the same Yahoo! Group or the same discussion-forum or we blog on the same site...
We exchange e-mails with some of them and try to know the other person better. Some make it to our Messenger lists, and with a few of them, we get close enough to exchange phone numbers and have regular conversations.
I have met many of my virtual friends in real life and I don't regard them as just my online friends anymore. They have become an integral part of my life. My two best friends are people I met online and we have been friends now for more than 4 years.

A few years back, if someone told me that they were meeting online friends, I would have assumed that the person has no friends in real life. Today, I think very differently.
I will not say that I don't regret any net-friendship. There were 3 that were not very great experiences. But there are so many online friends with whom I have had some wonderful experiences.

It is often said that we find it easier to confide in people who are complete strangers because they do not judge us as they do not know us. This is very true, according to me. On the down-side, as your net-friend becomes a very good friend of your's and he/she is not just another person online, one tends to stop being as open as one was before.

Friends are people who occupy a special place in your heart - a place which never even existed before. When they leave, that place remains empty forever and no one can fill that space because no two individuals are alike. Every person is unique and it is never really possible to replace someone.
Online friendship is truly a gift of technology. We should treasure them and not let them slip away. Friendship, virtual or real, is a gift and it must be cherished.