Central Massachusetts
What I See and What I Want
Like most anyone, I have a love/hate relationship with social media. I love the relationships and connections made. But I dislike the impact social media can have on my heart and mind. Scrolling through what looks like endless happiness and success online can start to rub and blister my own reality. One of the things I wrestle with the most is wanting my life, home and family to look like the pictures I see. Right now.
I want the newly remodeled house with all the right decor. I want to take all the trips, share all the happy memories and capture all the cherished photos today. Give me all the cool stuff and experiences. I want a life that looks good online and I want it right now.
Do Your Blooms Have Roots?
But here’s the thing: A curated feed is not the same as a curated life. I can have a beautiful life on social media with lots of little boxes looking just so. But what motivated those images? Did I share out of an abundance of life already lived and created over time? Or did I plan and create the experiences for the sake of the images?
I can plant and grow a garden, harvest some of the colorful buds and display them in a vase on my kitchen table. Noticing how lovely they are, I might take a photo and share it online. Did I grow the garden to take the picture or take the picture because the garden was so lovely? There’s a fundamental difference between the two. The first is a life created for the sake of sharing. The second represents a life already lived well for the sake of living; the photo is simply shared out of abundance. Though both lives and images look the same, the underlying motivation changes everything.
Live Life First
Henry David Thoreau said:
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
If I catch myself doing something for the sake of sharing it online, I should stop. A life lived well is worth sharing; but a life lived for the sake of sharing is bound to disappoint.
For example, I love decorating my home. When I finish a room, I see nothing wrong with sharing a picture online. But if I’m hurrying to make a room look just so for the sake of sharing an image, I’m no longer living well. While I can run to Target and buy all the things that make my house look a certain way, doing so doesn’t really make my house feel like home. What makes my house feel like my home is the life I live and build here over time. My favorite decor isn’t anything from Target but the stuff I’ve curated over time through real life adventures.
Curating Memories
The water color of the Eiffel Tower hanging in my bedroom not only matches the paint on the walls, but more importantly, it reminds me of the day I bought it in Paris. Looking at that picture takes me right back to exploring the streets of France with my husband.
In our bathroom we have a painting of the Ponte Vecchio bridge in Florence, Italy. When we were in Florence, we’d leave our apartment on Via Maggio and cross the Arno river through the Ponte Vecchio. So when I found this painting of the bridge in a Florentine paper shop, I brought it home as a reminder of a real place where real memories were made. Can I purchase a similar picture online? Yes, I’m sure I can. But this piece of art hangs as a memory and not just something to complete a room for the sake of sharing an image.
Do I buy art at Target too? You bet. But my point is this: I want my real life and home to be the thing I work hard to curate — not just the images I share online. If I do share something, I hope I do so out of abundance and not simply for the sake of the images.