Selfies

Selfies

Mar 18, 2022 | Power

There is something unnerving about our reliance on presenting ourselves to “the world” through the use of ‘selfies.’ It is as if our ability to capture an image of ourselves with the use of a phone’s camera indicates something about our inherent power as humans.

How many people are out there explaining to us that all we need to do is X, Y, and Z, and we will somehow achieve our dreams? Must our dreams be quantifiable to the masses? Must we curate ourselves for an audience that for the most part really does not truly care for our struggles at all, but rather the image of “perfection” we instead project?

Is anyone else exhausted from the hordes of individuals peddling their senseless ‘wares’ to the masses, as if they have the answers alone? Must we suffer through one more pointless podcast that we immediately forget when we put down our phones and return to our real lives?

Let me qualify the above statement, as not all podcasts are pointless. There are incredible podcasts out there, but there are also a plethora of podcasts that reinforce our brokenness as a society.

The term, power, does not merely connote an idea of strength; rather, it also speaks of our fragility. We are born, we grow, we live, and we die. This universe is so vast that the word itself is empty, as worlds within worlds spin inside our molecules, while something we name dark matter is thought to make up nearly one-third of the matter-energy composition of the universe.

Maybe ‘power’ can be reframed as a feeling of self. For instance, perhaps power is something we feel by ourselves in the woods on a hike at a moment in which we simply feel “okay” for a moment to be our fragile selves. Maybe power is an emotion we feel as we watch our kids grow up only to realize (later) we must let them go – literally and figuratively. Maybe power is recognizing that nothing we do matters in a universe that is so vast that it is still beginning 13.5 billion light years away. Maybe power is the recognition that everything matters.

When we stop our lives to take pictures and tell the world how strong we are at that very moment, it is a wonderful sentiment, but perhaps it is misguided. Perhaps the energy we spend investing in our idea of the world might be best spent embracing ourselves so we may literally and figuratively embrace others.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with ‘selfies’ at all. It could be viewed as an invitiation. I suppose the question here is what do we wish to project through the use of a ‘selfie?’ Are we projecting our very selves, or are we projecting a passing intepretation of what we think we might be? But for whom is this projection? Why?

Perhaps, a’selfie’ does not just refer to photography, but rather an intent to present parts of ourselves we feel comfortble sharing while omitting what we may consider ‘dark.’ What if we shared our darkness? What if we allowed others inside our brokenness?

A wise woman said to me recently that our brokenness is what makes us whole. As a man, I have always run away from my brokenness. Perhaps many of us run from it. Perhaps Smokey Robinson says it best in Tears of a Clown…

The Loneliness

The Loneliness

Feb 6, 2022 | Social Media

It has been reported that the feeling of loneliness may be correlated with the use of social media, and, even at face value, there seems to be merit in these reports.

It is rare–or does it even happen at all–when someone posts the moment of a sadness, the moment when something went absolutely wrong. “Wait, stay right there, let me grab my phone so I can take a picture of you crying at the news your grandmother just passed away.”

Such “moments” do not happen, because there is something patently absurd about stopping a moment to share it without fully experiencing it. There is something terribly isolating when one uses social media to the extent that it becomes embedded in one’s experiences of moments.

We are missing something out there, and technology can capture it. wait, we can edit the moment with a filter. We can edit reality itself, right?

Maybe we can. Maybe reality is turning into a digital experience. Maybe we are evolving, and love, hate, anger and sadness can all be adequately felt through a screen.

There just seems to be something so lonely about the experience of social media, staring down at a tiny screen, plugging into a matrix that mines your use of it for data that is then sold to companies that try to sell you. Social media is not all bad. There are wonderful moments captured on there that indeed are beautiful, raw, poignant.

Rather, we are referring to the rank and file, the ones who watch others on social media in abject silence. These are the forgettable people who are not worthy of being watched themselves. They are lonely, maybe even petty, possibly not. They are right, however, about one thing. They are forgettable–and most people are, which is a shame.

The Money

The Money

Jan 2, 2022 | Power

Ever notice that many entrepreneurs in this age bracket often resort to citing their own financial wealth as proof that others should follow their inherent “power” and step into their own proverbial “greatness?”

Honestly, there is something strangely endearing about such folks. They mean well, do well and generally are fine people, but there is a disconnect. Invariably, these individuals are talented in way society tremendously values, and it probably does not hurt that these people are very charismatic and physically attractive, which are traits that work well in social media.

Where is the 300-pound obese woman with a high school education on social media? She is inherently sweet, cares about others, but really possesses no talent or skill that will get her beyond her current station in life. Her value equates to $12/hr at a local fast-food chain, and it is the best she can do and she makes do with the little she has to her name.

What can entrepreneurs say to this woman? Maybe she is kind, mostly selfless with a heart if not of gold, then made out of silver. She is a woman we will never get to know, because she is removed from sight, hidden, shy and unattractive.

Moreover, she is poor — and in a society addicted to numbers, we cannot get past what she lacks. As entrepreneurs cite their 6 and 7-figure incomes, such individuals like this hypothetical, yet real, woman become marginalized, fictionalized and ultimately forgotten.

Do we want to know the truth? Do we value character, moral fibers, empathy? Yes and no.

If yes, we may be near December when we watch the Hallmark Channel and cry at the mere hint of the corny love we witness, but desperately crave in our bones. Of course, this is a fallacy, too. Some people are mean for many reasons, but let’s pretend that is not the case.

If no, then it is the rest of the year when we enter the grind and celebrate the “been there, done that” philosophy that explains too much around us. By explaining to others that we have already been where they have been and done what they have done, we render their narrative meaningless. In these cases, let’s just stand in front of the mirror and tell ourselves the stories we want to hear.

What is life about? It is about the money, and it is about everything else we feel, think, hate, love, forget, and manipulate each and every day.

Hey entrepreneur. Take your 6 or 7-figure income and shove it.

The Speed

The Speed

Dec 22, 2021 | Time

Remember being a kid and thinking about adulthood? It seemed like a theory that would never be proven. Childhood lasted forever — every moment, experience, bowl of Quaker oatmeal seemed to require an eternity to complete.

Fast forward a few years, and we begin to experience time differently. Time moves with such haste, such speed, and we begin to understand why grandparents cannot remember what happened last week. For them, their time is somehow broken down into decades–the 50’s, 60’s, the 70’s–when did they graduate high school?

The speed of time. As we age, we acquire mass, it seems, and the speed at which we move through life increases in direct opposition to our ability to maintain our physical selves. We see wrinkles, run slower if at all, and a sadness creeps in that can only be explained by the realization that we are mortal.

Childhood ends when we realize the fundamental nature of time not only applies to us, it will bring us to our knees. If we have kids, then the even worse realization is that they will experience the same thing.

There is a laconic beauty to life. We are born, we die–and in between we have no memory of the former and pretend the latter does not exist until the illusion no longer works. Like Siegfried and Roy, the tiger will get us…

The Validation

The Validation

Nov 2, 2021 | Social Media

There is something deeply disturbing about the validation required by many today.

Did we eat the right food, say the right thing, buy the right product, look good doing it?

While not completely worthless–it is very rare when something can be designated in such a manner–social media is pretty close. Do we really need to say things to an audience of people that we for the most part do not know or honestly even care about?

Do you really care about Roger Jones, that dude you never talked to in 4th through 12th grade, but now 20 years later like each other’s posts about grilled cheese and babies?

Admittedly, there must be something biological that occurs when we post snippets of our lives on social media platforms. It sort of feels good. Yeah, our lives rock, our kids are too cute, our knowledge is too stellar.

It is crap. It really is a bunch of crap. There is something to be said for living within one’s own mind and heart and the parameters of a life you created with your own hands. A life that can be turned off or erased, which is entirely the case with social media, is not real.

The time we spend updating people we do not know, care about, or possible even like, can perhaps better be spent on the people with whom we work, love, or trying to love, etc.

There is an emptiness to social media, a puffing up of the proverbial chest, a step back into our primordial minds in which we must have sought validation wherever we could.

Validation cannot be bought, sold, or offered through video screens. Rather, it is an experience inside one’s mind, earned through breathing, letting go, crying, making mistakes, quitting jobs, landing them, giving birth, saying goodbye, falling down and getting up. 

Social media validates itself–that is all it does. It validates technology and the sadness we feel, but rarely express…