I am almost never on Facebook, but last week, as I was waiting to board a plane, I started idly flipping around on my phone, and once I determined that nothing interesting was happening on LinkedIn (nothing ever is), I clicked open Facebook and started scrolling.
At the top of my notifications was the message that someone I knew named Barbara, someone I was Facebook friends with, which is not the same as being actual friends with, had died after a long illness.
I didn’t know Barbara was ill. This was probably because I really didn’t know Barbara. Not well, anyway.
She used to call me a lot, and text me, and then Facebook Messenger me to alert me to the calls and the texts. I don’t know how she got all of that information — people who know me well know my phone number, I guess, but they also know me well enough to know that I hate talking on the telephone unless it’s scheduled and planned out — but she would hear me say something on my podcast or read something I wrote and she’d call and text and want to chat.
And then my group was called, and the unformed blob of passengers called Group 4 funneled and jostled its way between the ropes and the stanchions, all of us looking at our phones and avoiding eye contact as we pushed to the front. As this was happening, I was thinking about Barbara.
She was a lovely person, but she was also an irritating person, and I suddenly felt guilty for all of the times I just ignored the messages. Maybe she got the hint, I thought to myself, and they tapered off. I hoped that our last exchange by email or text was a good one. Meaning, one in which I didn’t leave her hanging.
And then it suddenly occurred to me, a slight memory, a twinge in the part of the brain that can’t quite allow itself to forget things completely, that I might have, maybe, possibly, perhaps, reacted to the increased velocity of emails and messages and voicemails coming from Barbara’s direction by utilizing the block function on my phone.
I don’t recall doing it. But I do recall wanting to do it. And so, it’s a simple matter of opening up that part of the phone and checking, which I did while I was stowing my carry-on, and I discovered that yes, in fact, I had decided at some point in the past to block this nice, now dead, person named Barbara from my handheld device.
In other words, I was confronted with the evidence that I’m basically a monster, at which point the airplane doors closed, and we were ordered to turn off our phones.
So, I sat there for a while, buckled up in my own stew of regret and shame and the realization that I’m a cold and impatient person. FAA regulations required me to strap myself in with nothing to distract me from the sheer meanness of my actions, made worse by the fact that she was dead, which meant I couldn’t do that thing where you erase a bad thing you did to someone by being extra nice to them from now on.
And while it is true that you really cannot answer every email and call and text after a certain number, I probably could have handled it better than just hitting block like she was some kind of Social Security scammer or Chinese-language telemarketer.
The good thing about plane travel is that you can use the time to do some focused work. I used the five hours to think about all of the people I haven’t blocked, all of the people in my life with whom I communicate regularly and cheerfully. I thought about all of the many, many times I didn’t send someone’s email to the trash or delete their voicemail unheard.
In other words, I spent the flight effectively rationalizing and explaining away all of my misdeeds. It was a good thing for me that it was a coast-to-coast flight. I had a lot of work to do. But if you do this kind of self-examination diligently, by the time the plane lands and you’re gathering up your things, you’re also unbuckling yourself from your memories and shame and self-loathing. You’ve made your peace with your past, as flawed as it is. You’re in a new place with new things to think about. You’re ready to move on.
But before I do, I need to say this: Barbara, I’m sorry.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
