“The lives we share [on social media] are, in many ways,
not our lives at all. They’re curated content.” --Katy
Huie Harrison, blogger
I must tell the truth.
The life that I live on Facebook, the life I show to all the
world when I post, the life I share with the 1,398 “friends” who follow me...well:
it’s not really my real life. My whole life. My complete life.
My unedited life.
Yes, my posts and photos show what I do. Portray how I live on
some of my days in this life. These highlights highlight me: the 90-mile charity
bike ride I finished this summer, the beautiful family wedding I did in a
Boston park on a gorgeous September afternoon, the cute little baby I held in
my arms just before I dipped her into the waters of baptism.
But I forgot to post some other pictures. Sorry. Like the
photo of me lying flat on the ground next to my bike, twenty miles from the
finish of that epic ride. At that point, after a long and hot and frustrating
day, my neck and shoulders were killing me and so the only way I could carry on
was to rest this 58-year old body, beaten up after all those pedal strokes.
I forgot to post the shot of me at the wedding too, of the
socks I wore that were mismatched, one black and one blue; of the mustard stain
on my tie I think I hid well from the rest of the guests. No shot either, of me
running to the car parked on the Jamaica Way, to retrieve my sermon, just
minutes before the service began.
I forgot to post the photos of just after I baptized that
squirmy little baby too; how she howled when the cold water hit her forehead
and then she passed gas in that cute way only a kid can and then when I handed
her back to her parents, she spit up all over her Mom, and didn’t stop crying
until the close of worship.
But, of course, I did not post those images. Who wants to
hear about or even worse, see my un-curated life? My messy life. My ragged and
always just on the edge of falling apart life?
That’s the odd thing about social media: Facebook and
Instagram and the like. At their best
these apps allow us to connect with friends and family, to share information,
to find long lost relationships, to post about our politics, to declare what
matters most to us, to connect human lives in ways never before possible. These platforms work: that’s why 2.1 billion
folks each day use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.
Yet, at their worst, these cyber-places can give a warped
view of human life, and for the more vulnerable among us, can tempt them to conclude
that their lives don’t matter. That they are in fact “less than”….when compared
to the Mom who looks svelte and trim even though she just gave birth two days
ago. When you read a post about a party and find out that you were the one not
invited. When you scroll through all of the perfect and pristine pictures and
updates about other people and all the ways they are “just so” and you worry
your life doesn’t quite stack up.
There’s even a phrase for this phenomenon: FOMO—fear of missing out.
Fear of not measuring up. Fear of always falling short.
If you’ve got a middle school youth or high schooler in your
house, if you are in college, if you, like me, sometimes scroll through
Facebook and I wistfully wish that I was like all these other happy folks--you
know of what I speak.
It doesn’t just happen on the internet. Such life curation and
FOMO happen in real life too. And so, we
see a family all dressed up at church and conclude that clearly, they have it
much better together than your family, who bickered over breakfast on the way
to the car and worship. You see a beautiful house on your street, with a shiny
new car parked in the driveway, and decide they must have a much better life
than your own, and they are clearly more successful too, right? Youth see a peer with a toned and taut body
and so they are tempted to eat too much and binge and purge because when they
look in the mirror, they hate what they see.
Status update: all humans live flawed and stumbling lives.
Sometimes we soar and sometimes we stumble and always, all those externals have
absolutely nothing to do with our essential worth as children of God. All
humans are made beautiful and broken. All of your neighbors are just as happy
as you sometimes and just as miserable as you sometimes too. So that cute baby posted by your friend on
their page? She can be a tiny tyrant too. That furry little kitten? He pooped
on the bed when no one was looking. And
the absolutely scrumptious home cooked meal practically jumping off the page? That
only came to be on the fifth try at the recipe.
There’s real life. There’s curated life. May God help us to
remember the difference between the two, for when it comes to our innate
goodness, it’s already there. No update needed.
Now where did I leave that other sock?
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