A Gift From Sri Lanka

So a while ago I did a Facebook experiment.  I had been kind of anti Facebook for a while, even challenged myself to boycott it for  a month, just to see what more productive things I would spend my time doing if I wasn’t sitting at the computer for that amount of time.  And I did fine, didn’t really miss it, did more laundry, payed more attention to my kids, all good stuff.  But I went back on after a while and then decided that if I was going to be on Facebook I wanted to reach out, build up my “friend” base and network, socialize, have fun, and use Facebook to spread the passion I have for the things I do, namely taekwondo, and physical therapy.

For half an hour I clicked on the “send request” tab.  You know the list of people that goes on for miles of friends you might know?  I just clicked and clicked.  I wanted to see who would friend me.  Who else was out there that wanted to reach out, have fun and network with me.

I ended up with A LOT of new friends, and many were people who were friends of friends on Facebook through the taekwondo network.  Every time I saw that someone had accepted my friend request, I would smile.  Fun.  A new connection.

Then I started to get messages from some of the new friends (strangers).  One in particular messaged me three or four times with, “Hi.”  And I got nervous.  What have I done, making friends with strangers.  Who knows who they are, what they are about, what intentions they have, you know.

One of those messages popped up on my screen this morning.  I am not sure why I decided to answer this time.  I felt drawn to.  And I said, “Hi,” back.

Long story short, I met someone from Sri Lanka this morning, and an hour later, we pulled ourselves from the computer to continue our day’s plans.  My new friend is a 14 year veteran of taekwondo and competed in the Olympic trials recently.    They study human resources and English literature and the dream is to live in Canada or the USA some day.  It turns out that I am their only foreign Facebook friend.  (I hope to help change that).  They had been messaging to connect with me, curious and excited to reach out to someone across the world.

We talked about taekwondo a lot.  The passion.  My friend said, “Taekwondo is part of my life.  It is the only thing that makes me relax on the earth.”

Today the world became smaller for me.  I am as excited as my new friend to connect.  Thanks Facebook for my gift from Sri Lanka.

Stay tuned for the essay that they have promised to write for Taekwondo Spirit!

COMMENT

It was great…