What's Up?

WhatsApp has been a part of my life for over six years now. Before the seven years hitch sets in, I thought of noting down 5 things that WhatsApp has taught me. Incidentally, I realized that the application has not only influenced my day-to-day life and routine, it has also affected the way I react and respond. How? Read on…

·       Happiness

When I wake up in the morning and see a dear one’s message, a broad smile spreads on my face. It could be anything – a simple good morning or last evening’s late goodnight. It gives a strange flavor of physical connect in the virtual world; like a juice with flavors of fruits and not real fruits!

·       Patience

How many times have we waited for the response for our ping from someone - Constantly checking the notifications and silently praying that our smartphone breaks the silence! Sometime, it could be because the message is not delivered due to poor network coverage on any of the either ends or simply because they have not responded yet. If that person was physically present, imagine the magnitude of drama that would follow for such lack of response!

·       Silence

How much time can we be silent with someone who is beside us? After sometime, we all would talk them. Apologize. Laugh. Or at least say what we wanted to say and move on. But, with WhatsApp and its features to block others, hide the “last seen” and what not, it is more than easy to ignore someone. I am not going to analyze further to evaluate if that’s good or not. But, it’s weird for sure.

Virtual world showers us with unlimited freedom. To fake. Hide. Avoid. Ignore. Add filters to our face and re-read thoughts we wanted to share. But, sometimes, too much freedom is not so good. After all, what is life without a dash of humanity?

·       Indifference

Now, this is my favorite! Every day we get loads of forwarded messages via texts, videos, images, hyperlinks and the latest GIFs. Most of them doesn’t make sense and half of them are already shared by others. They clutter our time as much as they clutter our phone memory. Over years, we have learnt to be indifferent towards such messages; have made peace with it and moved on.

·       Thankfulness

I wanted to save the best for last. Regardless of the fact that our day more or less starts and ends with WhatsApp, it acts as a strong medium to be in touch with near and dear ones equally. Unlike other social media, the privacy element is more with WhatsApp and hence, it is special.

Well, these are the five virtues that I think WhatsApp has taught me over years. What did it teach you?