Before there were bffs, there were best friends. And while I am too old to consider my roommate and oldest dear friend Louisa Kasdon ’72 a bff, our friendship that began in the amber New England fall of 1968 still feels fresh and quite some distance from “forever.”

In 40 years, rarely has more than a week or two passed without a phone conversation. While Wellesley made the introduction, Louisa and I have diligently curated our friendship. As time and technology progress, email and text augment and punctuate our continuous conversations with real time commentary and images of lives changing.

谈话开始于Wellesley。我们最后几个小时谈到这个世界。柬埔寨和越南是我们的全球冲突，尽管我们在第二次世界大战的余烬和余震中被构思。对话和讨论渗透了我们对决策的大问题和小问题的过程。“我不知道我的想法，直到嘴巴出来！”路易莎曾经说过。讨论鼓励细微差别;没有他们，我们倾向于只是反应。一定数量的数十年的时间提供了时间来反思。少数主要生活事件，心灵或令人心碎，逃脱了我们的持续观察，分析和对话。 It all began in the shadows of the Well, Quad, and the President’s private box in Alumnae Hall.

路易莎和我都是“洞里斯利附近的”镇“：她是一个精致的城市女孩;我来自波士顿南部的郊区。我的家人是天主教徒;路易莎的家人是犹太人。我有幸通过进入Wellesley并被路易莎的神话般的家庭吸收来扩展我的狭隘的开端。与犹太相关组织一起工作的Penchant在我的家庭桌子和臭名昭着的剑桥浇水孔中最早的社会正义和变更时间奠定了框架。

In the spring of senior year, I met and married a young man who had grown up in Syria. A Palestinian by birth, he was recruited by a wealthy State Department patron to attend college in the United States—a process which required he adopt the official status of “stateless refugee.” We met in Harvard Square. Back then, academia was a melting pot and such a union would not have appeared unusual. Another roommate married an MIT grad student from Persia. Louisa was my maid of honor, and a short time later we celebrated her marriage to a brilliant pre-med she had met while at Wellesley. Life was a big tent, an imperfect one, but few, if any, were excluded because of who they were, or what they believed.

Talk then centered on a shared passion for relevance, changing the world, and infusing meaning into our young lives. Today, we share the accumulated thrill of our children’s successes and rapture over the fun of having grandchildren. We are surprised to find ourselves changed by our time in the world. It tempers our joy with the loss of loved ones, sickness, and the fear of becoming dependent in old age. Life touches us all.

但重要的问题仍为我们。我们如何更好地触摸生活？这些触感如何帮助使这个世界更安全？为什么我们这么担心？当我们看新闻时，为什么我们经常哭？谈话很重要吗？我们如何改变现在发生的一些更具可怕和危险的谈话？为什么我们这么关心？

路易莎的孩子们正在居住在巴黎和加利福尼亚州，但生活在欧洲反犹太主义和宗教极端主义上升的冲突和后果。我的儿子，生活在美国西部，厌倦了innuendo，抗阿拉伯笑话和随机的t. ..在几年前仍然通过改变他的阿拉伯语发声姓氏来惊讶我。在今天的气氛中，我相信他的新妻子就像我一样高兴。在我的手机上，我的女儿是我的女儿，因为她和她的宝宝蜷缩在她的窗户外，等待波士顿马拉松轰炸机在她经常安静的街区的枪战期间逮捕。

That’s just a thumbnail of our stories. There is so much to think and say right now. We are still connected in our caring and deepening worry over the state of the world we leave to those whose lives also will be changed—changes so many of us fear.

In the bff world, anyone instantly can connect anywhere, anytime, with anything—from sex to extremist ideology. Potential bff’s line up along the intersecting paths of social media—fomented, powered, and herded by billions of instantaneous “likes” and shares. The content of conversation is measured and judged successful by click throughs and open rates. Likes, comments, and shares—the ways people show they care—offer only semblance of reflection. We are living in a meteoric news cycle, but what does it all mean?

我们可以做些什么来恢复讨论，激情和参与的乐趣，支持勇气说话或采取行动？最近的一些民意调查，推文和选民焦点小组表明，这一总统选举季节在谈话中释放了真相的时刻。就像许多人一样看到一个无与伦比的仇恨洪流，对纳粹意识形态的兴起进行了比较。但有一件事是真的，除非我们改变这个谈话，否则它有能力改变我们。

Here’s how it might play out in my life if I were entering Wellesley today.

这些天我可能没有进入Wellesley，但我们假设我做了。路易莎和我可能会在政治学中发短信101 - 比较关于对事物的反应的票据，并对我们周围的人发表评论。我们正在寻找PC表情符号，并与朋友玩单词，我们的眼睛陷入困境和危险的姿势。我们不会在图书馆见面。我们的设备在我们面对面的对话之前。我在Facebook上有更多的朋友。我肯定是“部分”一个更大的世界 - 但我会吗？今天，我的丈夫可能无法被允许进入美国，我心爱的孩子和孙子们可能不会出生。

While writing this, I had the honor of meeting the grandson of Martha and Waitstill Sharp, two residents of the town of Wellesley who did what few Americans may ever do. In 1939, the Sharps chose to leave their own children to travel to Prague and Southern France to help rescue those who needed to flee the Nazis. They focused on both relief and emigration assistance for six years, doing everything from registering refugees, to securing releases from prisons, to arranging travel to safer nations. Thanks to the tireless work of their grandson, the couple’s story has been preserved and will live on to inspire millions. Just imagine how many descendants will be born of those who were rescued because of the Sharps’ selfless courage.

想象一下今天会发生什么。如果锐斯通过电子邮件和文本进行了通信，那么将一个人回到难民的困境中，它会变得更容易吗？我确定这对夫妇在历史上的任何时刻都在以英语为主，因为他们的价值观和罕见的渴望服务。但我对我们不太普通的个人可以几乎无法跟上电子邮件，Facebook通知和我们的新闻饲料。我们的世界尽可能危险。开始谈话是一件小事，但改变全球人可以从我们每个人开始。

This year, can we put down our devices and speak more frequently face to face? Can we learn a little more about our similarities than our differences? Can we become more courageous in our quest to be human? Can we commit to deeper conversations, enduring friendships, and shared, honest emotions? If we do these things, I know from experience that we can change the conversation.