In two weeks, all of my children will be together, in one zip code — mine, no less — for the first time in what seems like forever. Knowing any attempt at resistance will be futile, they will grudgingly appease me and pose for a picture.
Their exasperation will be a well kept secret among us, a secret I will easily forget as soon as the moment is captured and permanently transferred from the present to a nostalgia-worthy past. The picture will tell the story as I would write it — a whole rendered far happier, by virtue of togetherness, than the sum of its not, by any means, unhappy parts.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? Is happiness real unless it is posted on some form of social media for all to see? Does the extent of the happiness depend on the number of “likes?”
I’ll be the first to admit I am and have long been a bit ambivalent and, worse still, hypocritical about social media. I resisted it at first, wondering why anyone is interested in what anyone else happens to be thinking or doing at any particular moment. If I cared, I would ask, and even then, I generally do so only to be polite.
I resisted also as a matter of principle, appalled by all the fake (I assumed, because I’m a bit nasty) smiles and the manipulated depictions of life. I held myself above it all, until I succumbed to reality, the reality that I was wildly envious of all these permanently happy people populating my news feed. Could the grass really be so much greener on the other side of all my fences? Months passed, still no evidence of misery. There was nothing else to do but jump on board.
I have done my share of posting pictures that nobody in their right mind should give a shit about, announcing to the world that I am a perfect mom or sister or daughter or a perfect friend or a perfect dog owner and that it is virtually impossible to be in my presence without smiling. I haven’t just tallied the “likes;” I have checked my phone obsessively for the little red superscript telling me there might be another thumbs up. I have silently grieved when the notification is not, in fact, a “like,” but a reminder about a birthday for someone I barely even know.
Other than posting a link to my blog each time I write one, I have steered clear of using Facebook as a forum for debate, whether civilized or not so much. I have not judged those who use it as a soapbox, as posting a link to my innermost and highly irrelevant thoughts places me in a bit of a glass house.
But when I heard, the other day, that the young mother who murdered more than a dozen innocent people before turning her six month old baby into an orphan had just posted her allegiance to ISIS on Facebook, I began to rethink the weird questions. Like the one about the tree in the forest or the one about true happiness being a warm “like.” Like the one about whether crazy talk inspires otherwise sane people to do crazy things — I still believe the answer to that one is “no.”
Like the one about whether guns kill people or people kill people. I suppose it's only a matter of time -- smart guns with smart triggers will be commonplace in the arsenal of smart weapons, and there'll be an ammo app in our smart phones that will enable us to spew bullets along with our rants. For now, though, as far as I know, it still takes two to tango.
Just hours after my daughter and I discussed whether Facebook has outlived its usefulness, whether the viciousness and the hostility has finally made the silly attention-seeking even sillier, a good friend who has tended toward the soapbox announced, eloquently and at length, that he was done. Done with saying things he would not say in person, done arguing with people he doesn’t know, people with whom he would never, not on the coldest day in Hell, achieve any sort of meeting of minds. Done stirring the pot on such a broad and, apparently, incendiary scale.
As a writer, or aspiring writer, can I truly be expressing my thoughts if nobody reads it? Of course. Will I still hope that I get a bit of an audience and an occasional “atta girl?” Of course. Will I take a stand and shut down my Facebook page? Not yet.
And will I post the picture I intend to take in two weeks, the one in which my kids and I and even the dog all pose as the happiest beings on earth, happier still to be basking in the glow of one another. Of course!Even if nobody “likes” it.
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