I have a perfect life. Really, I do. Look at my Facebook page - my kids are happy, participating in cultural programs with flair, always being kind and helpful to each other, and my husband is purrrrr-fect - romantic and helpful and all those things we want in a husband (well, that part is true, really). My Twitter feed is filled with interesting articles that I think you will enjoy about motherhood, natural living, life in our metro area, and I even Instagram the occasional knitting project I have just finished or gourmet deviled eggs I have made. Follow me on Pinterest? Of course you do, because you want to see what interesting project I am going to begin, the homemade soap I am going to make one day, or the threaded spaghetti hot dog bites creation that I am going to make and impress my kids with. Oh, and yes, of course I look like that profile picture I posted of myself, thin and with great hair, smiling like I haven't a care in the world.
<<Did you catch the copious amounts of eye rolling and dripping sarcasm??>>
Seriously. What a freakin' social media snob, right? But we all do this in one form or another, and it's really okay. I love social media - it’s a great way to connect with our friends and family, near and far, and share all the cool things we find and see and want and plan to do. It's the modern-day equivalent of a coffee klatch or sewing circle - we gather together, albeit at different times, and share the nice things that are going on in our lives. We catch up, learn some fun things, and see the cute pics of new babies and puppies and vacations. We follow things that interest us, share them with our friends, and really enrich our personal communities in ways that we never could before the advent of tools like Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest, even good old Google.
I don't share a lot of the mundane things in my life, or the times when things go wrong, because I don't want to complain about how sometimes things just suck balls and all I want to do is curl up and go to sleep and let the inmates run this asylum. I would rather reinforce (and share) all the good in my life. My kids are awesome (and at times atrocious), my husband is truly wonderful (and at times a dick (he will tell you that)), I try to be kind to them all (and at times I am a real bitch), my house is occasionally clean (when it’s not a mess of dog hair and dust and papers to file), I try to keep lots of veggies in my house (and mostly throw them out when they go bad because I don't have time to use them), and I'm so lucky to work at home and be accessible to my family (and always behind on my work because working at home is one constant interruption), I have WONDERFUL friends and family who I know are always there for me (even if I don't call them enough...or, like, ever). You get the idea.
I just read an article titled Instagram's Envy Effect. It's an interesting read
about how we only see what others want us to see on social media, that we only
have part of the story from what they post and the envy that stems from seeing
snippets of their perfect life. There have been many blogs and articles written in this vein, about over-sharing life and promoting our own awesomeness - it's definitely a discussion I hear both in the real world and online. There are a lot of ideas and opinions and judgments about how social media should make us feel, about what it says about us as a society and as individuals, and these opinions and discussions aren't always nice.
But, social media is still social. There are many official definitions of social but they pretty much all relate to coming together as a group or community. Some of us still get together at parties or gatherings, church socials, and we share there, too. There are pictures brought out of wallets, chatter about new promotions at work, and Jane might talk about the latest tip for getting those beautiful roses like in her garden. But I bet money that Jane isn't going to share that in the winter while she was waiting for rose-pruning time she chauffeured her three kids to every sporting event known to man and made 154 boring casseroles for 154 boring dinners and scrubbed the kitchen floor every week and it still managed to look like a tiny army of dirt people rolled on it every day. Oh, and she probably won't share about how the minivan is making that rattling noise again that she can't quite describe to the mechanic and she really needs to clean her basement because it’s starting to resemble an episode of "Hoarders" down there and, oh, that’s right - time to change the kitty litter again...it’s boring. It’s life. But the roses make her happy, and she’ll share that.
My point here really is we all have mundane lives. And we all have beautiful lives. That is the balance. And so why not share the good things, the things that make us smile or fill us with pride? They make us happy. And happiness is really a choice, for the most part. It doesn’t come by accident or luck; we all have the power over our own happiness, to choose to be happy. We shouldn’t judge each other by the social media we choose to post - life is way too short to judge each other. Instead of being envious of my neighbor's gorgeous roses, I will look at her Facebook post about how she pruned her roses to make them so gorgeous, and I will take notes and think about growing gorgeous roses in my yard. I will be happy, both for her accomplishment and my inspiration that grew from it. And next time I see her in the real world, I will tell her I really enjoy when she talks about roses on Facebook, because it makes me smile.
I mean, really, I know that the profile pic I choose to use is one from several years and 40 pounds ago, but I still use it because I like it - it’s one of the few pics I have of me that I don't detest. Does that make me vain? Probably a bit. But I’m certainly not posting it because I want someone to envy me. It reminds me of a happy night when I was with my friends and my husband and we were having a great time, and to say anything else is really reading waaaaayyyy too much into it. And when I see the cool things my friends share, I will like them and know that they shared because it made them happy, not because they want someone to envy them.
I'll choose happy over envy any day of the week. :-)
