When you really think about it, life is almost always a front. How often are we not hiding, shielding, shadowing, skewing, or shading the reality we face, the reality we project, and the reality we live in? How rare and beautiful an occurrence it is when we can actually let go of our vulnerabilities, our insecurities and come clean to anyone, to ourselves, about the struggles and triumphs of our hidden lives. How often do we share something real, raw and boring? How often is what we share curated to be the most likeable, the least threatening? Can we handle the reality of our own mediocrity? Does the chaos of the world at large have an effect on the self image we promote? Media’s influence is powerful, subtle, invasive and widespread, I’m taking a moment to dive in and see how it settles, or more accurately, to dive out.
For me, I know this realization has come in large part from my separation. Living seasonally in New Zealand, and now moving away from the deeply ingrained community of Little Cottonwood, I’ve found myself more and more looking for communication and connection through a screen. Part of me knows this is a necessary evil, I love a lot about the life that I live, but being separated from my friends and family means if I want to communicate with them, it’s going to most likely be through an email, phone call, text, message, or something shared on social media. Nothing is inherently bad about this, but it can be hard to nourish real connections or understandings over the phone, or through a text, and I’ve found that it means that in times when my wistfulness or loneliness is heightened, I’m checking my phone often, and if I’m not finding a message from a friend, or I’m held back from reaching out, I’ll scroll compulsively through social media looking for… something. But what, honestly I’m not even sure.
Focusing so much of my attention on this politicized, polarized, and often phony world has had its effects. Yes there is information and inspiration, there is community support and constructive discussion, but so much more often there is this genre of stylized presentation, undertones of anger, lack of understanding, and an unwillingness to acknowledge.
Seeing this, and being separated from my regular channels of deeper or more intimate communication, have helped me realize where this behavior has its parallels in a non-virtual reality. People are cordial, confident, and often closed off. We aren’t used to real discussions about the struggles of mundane life. We want answers to questions like “whats up?” or “how are ya?” to be curt and positive, we’re not looking to start a discussion about your bullshit feelings because, we don’t have the time or the tools to handle that.
Advertisement is so ingrained in our daily lives that it has become part of our own self image. Indeed every platform that we use to share and connect has been so commercialized and bastardized to sell us something that we’ve become complicit in the act as well, to the point that sharing our status, whether it be on the phone or in a post, can often have the appearance of an advertisement of gleeful unreality. In fact, many of the ‘friends’ we share this space with have monetized their interactions and are actively trying to sell you something with their unrelenting positivity and hashtags. Every word, every image, is filtered through the best possible light to make us look as appealing as possible.
I’m not claiming innocence here either, and maybe the truth is there are just a lot of stoked people out there, but what it’s helping me realize now is how every interaction is an opportunity for us to present a curated version of ourselves. That time after time of coming up with these responses we lose sight of how we really are, what we’re doing, what we’re happy about, what we want to focus on, and what it is we really want to share. Yep, there’s a shallowness to life that is often hard and scary to break through. We spend such a little amount of time immersed in anything but distractions and gratifications we don’t know how to sit and be still with the ourselves, with the uncomfortable feelings, or even with the comfortable ones, having been taught that success isn’t something to bask in but to move on and continue building. Contentment, in a way, has become something we never experience, something with negative connotations similar to stagnation or ignorance.
There’s a lot of thoughts there, and not all of them can be placed like beads on a single thread. They’re a bit hectic, jumbled, and mixed up, but honestly that feels to me like just another symptom of this culture. We’re pulled in so many directions, encouraged to demand so many things of ourselves that we can easily become stifled by the most simple decisions, unsure of what’s best for us, what’s next, what we need, or what we should do, unable to acknowledge the reality that there is actually very little need to do anything anymore.
I’m not sure where all this is leading me, at least in the big picture, but on the small screen, especially that one in our pockets, I know it’s leading me to take a break. One of my resolutions for the last few years has been to consume less, and although this is a bit of a broad goal, it gives you the opportunity to approach a lot of aspects of life with a little more mindfulness about what we need, what is nourishing us, and what is just filler. This year in particular, in the age of Trump and politics becoming even more partisan and dysfunctional, I want to try and consume less media, and to also cultivate a better relationship with the media I do imbibe, or interact with.
But it’s not just less NPR, less Syria, Russia, or congress, it’ s less social media too, because after all that sphere is just another built with the intention of informing us and bringing us together but often only leaving us feeling more worthless, and disjointed.
But it’s also not just less, it’s changing the relationship. The relentless consumption of media has the effect of turning us into a voyeur, of peeking through a window and walking away silent but influenced. These spaces are designed for comment, not for constructive discussion, yet we still try. Why is that? We want to try, to find common ground, to influence, to convince, but so often we end up in a shouting match, name calling and angry with someone who “just can’t understand”. This is far from constructive in terms of using social media for progressive social change. This habit has the effect of breeding indifference, for we so accurately realize that commenting, contributing, will lead to no change, will suck our time, energy, and focus into just another noisy and open ended conversation.
So this is my way of creating accountability, my way of giving you all a wave to say I’m signing off for a moment. My livelihood doesn’t rely on likes, and ultimately, I don’t have a brand that will suffer from a brief rest from the battle of attention. A month seems like a solid sigh, something substantial but achievable. The shortest month should be a bit easier as well.
We all need a break now and again. A diet from the foods we love, but the ones that might be rotting our teeth. A nap from the relentless demands of a fast paced life. I’ll be here, if you need me. You can write, you can call, you can respond. I might post a thing or two here, which might seem conflicting, but although this might be a space that I work hard to present, it’s never been one I’ve had to overly stress about impressing anyone, or where I’m nervous about sharing my insecurities. I’m not sure if this respite will be successful, or exactly what the goal is, but my gut has been telling me it’s the right thing to do for a little while, so I’m going to listen. Maybe I can come back with a better head, a new idea on how to contribute without becoming lost, with a voice to encourage conversation rather than condemnation. Time will tell.
If you’ve read this far, I’m beyond grateful for you taking part in this discussion. I sincerely wish you health and wellbeing in this year ahead, and hope you can find a moment, however brief, to share with me your thoughts on this subject, or any other that’s been on your mind. Life is a wild and untamed ride, and we’re all in it together. Be well, be kind, do good.
Tim
Who are you without your image!