Life isn't always the way it looks on Social Media
The story that this picture doesn’t tell is of the grief and tears that were overwhelming only hours before. It was Halloween, my favorite holiday and now due to a divorce, it was no longer my wedding anniversary. Did I share that on social? No, I shared the picture my daughter took when we went to lunch to celebrate being out of an unhealthy relationship.
Life is full of duality. You can be happy for where you are currently at while simultaneously processing anger and grief. You can be happy and sad all in the same day.
Recently, my daughter and I were talking about social media the other day and she was telling me that in her age group it is frowned upon to share anything other than the highlights of your life. This conversation led to discussions of comparison, feeling left behind, superficial connections and so on.
FYI, that is not just for her age group. Its mine as well. That entrepreneur that you follow, she isn’t showing you the days she questions every decision she has ever made. She doesn’t share the launches that flopped. Or the plethora of technical issues that come along with a successful launch while Mercury is in retrograde.
That person that left the unhealthy chaotic relationship and is now publicly sharing her healthy relationship doesn’t discuss the realization that the tools she used to survive the previous relationship has no utility now. And that having a healthy open conversation with her person can be unfamiliar and scary, simply because she has never experienced it before and does not know how to proceed. She is trying to figure out how to exist in a healthy relationship and its messy sometimes. (For those that are reading way to much into this, Mark and I are fine.)
While I agree that social media is not the place to air out family and relational drama, or seek counseling, to only share the highlights is doing a lot of people an injustice. To give the impression that life is all vacation, happy moments and luxury is wrong. Life is hard. Its also beautiful. Yesterday’s post was supposed to show that. Maybe it missed its mark. That is the thing with communication, you can’t predict how things will be interpreted. So, to have clear communication, things must be stated, reflected, and stated again. Each time the message gets a little clearer.
If yesterday’s stories made you uncomfortable, I invite you to ask yourself what was it about them that made you uncomfortable? Was it the humanness? The vulnerability? The visible pain? What does it bring up for you on a personal level?
What makes it comfortable to watch the news at night with all its depression, violence and divisiveness but uncomfortable to watch a person close to you share a struggle? Why is one socially acceptable and the other not socially acceptable? Eh? I am open to your thoughts.