We send a message to someone and the application shows: message sent, message delivered, message read… But the person on the other side of the screen does not respond.

Okay, the world is crazy. We are busy eighteen hours a day and there are so many updates: email, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Messenger… Phew… And there’s someone there, in all of them, saying “hi”.

After the “hi”, we send another message that is viewed and ignored. Alright, here we go looking for the same excuse, the world is in a rush… and blah, blah… But then you realize that the person has entered several times – damn app that informs everything – and they don’t even send a simple face to say, “I am here”. Can’t write? Send an audio. Viewing and not responding – in almost all cases – is inelegant and shows disrespect for the sender. And respect is the most important thing in all relationships.

Our world has never had so much communication at its disposal. And our loneliness has never been so dramatic. The appeal of this new kind of friendship, the Facebook kind of friendship, is right there: that it’s so easy to disconnect. It’s easy to connect and make friends, but the biggest draw is how easy it is to disconnect.

It’s so easy on the internet, we just press ‘unfriend’ and that’s it, instead of 500 friends, we’ll have 499, but this will only be temporary, because tomorrow we’ll have another 500, and that undermines human ties”.

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After our sent message is ignored in a kind of ‘it doesn’t matter if this person sent me a message or not’, we think: ‘what did I say wrong?’.

Never before has indifference, disguised by technology, ‘destroyed’ so many expectations as it does today. It is not the ‘hatred’ for the other that dismantles our smile, sometimes so hard sewn. It is not the offense that extinguishes the spark of any kind of affinity from the heart. What saddens the soul, what can drown the most basic feelings of a heart, is called indifference. Indifference is the art of disdain.

To practice ‘indifference’ is to practice ‘inhumanity’. For what would indifference be if not the deconstruction of humanity? Those who practice indifference – ‘I’ll answer you when I feel like it and look there’ – make the other anything but human.

Ignoring the one who wrote us a message, left a message on the phone’s voice mail or sent us a ‘hello’ on social media is disrespectful.

It is not necessary for a person to fall in love with someone who has written a ‘hi’ to him for, out of politeness, that person will reciprocate with another ‘hi’. I’ve never known anyone to die for being kind, polite. Let’s be kind, even if it’s to say “I wish you wouldn’t write to me anymore, ok?”. Believe me, this sounds more ‘delicate’ than the silence of indifference.

It’s obvious that it’s not a good idea to wind up that boring guy who wants to go out with you at all costs. But even worse is being silent without even giving an opportunity to respond. We are all immersed, some more, some less, in the lake of the decision of others. ‘Will he answer me? Will she call me? It costs nothing’. And so, dependent on words from the other side of the screen, we remain anxious and hostages to indifference.

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It’s not the distance that separates people. It’s the coldness, the indifference, whatever, the lack of dialogue, the lack of attention… That does form chasms between people.

It is with small gestures of attention and respect for the other that society changes. If it is true that disdain, indifference, insensitivity can kill souls, then it is also true that polite gestures can invigorate them. And that’s worth a thousand kisses.