Part II of my social media initiation. Part I is here.
Using Facebook as a window into other people’s lives sometimes unleashes my tendency to compare my insides to other people’s outsides. This is such a ridiculous habit. It’s like wondering why I’m eating peanut butter and jelly alone on the couch while I watch Giada de Laurentis on television hosting a backyard garden party resplendent with beautiful people and scrumptious Italian food.
I love peanut butter and jelly, but dangle pesto rubbed halibut in front of me and my kid food starts tasting a tad bland. Translation: I love my life, my family, my friends, my work. But splash other peoples romance and adventures and success across my screen and I start to feel kind of dissatisfied with my lot.
And let’s be realistic – no one uses their Facebook page to air the dirty laundry. I don’t see anyone posting a picture showing frizzy hair or a muffin top. Twitter is no one’s favorite place to say “you can see the cottage cheese on my thighs through the shorts I’m wearing today, no wonder my husband is having an affair with people way cooler than me.”
And I think where I used to get confused (and occasionally still do) is by comparing the trappings of success with the actual experience of joy. It took me awhile to discover that trappings are not included on the list of ingredients for a blissful life. For example, I never felt proud of the measurable achievements in my former career because that career never felt tantamount to my overall purpose. It was, and still is, more important to me to have happy moments and loving relationships than fancy things or power status.
Which propels me right along to my next self-defeating habit – counting friends. For the most part I’m happier having fewer meaningful friendships than lots of acquaintances. But I still feel squatty when I go to add one of my lifelong closest friends in Facebook and notice she already has 217 others.
Intellectually I get that I have to start out at zero and add people one by one. (And yes, I have to do all of the adding. Joining the party five years late means no one even looks for me online anymore.) But there’s this bijigetty part of me that would rather have an ego-boosting number of friends before I feel comfortable even asking a single person to join my club. Talk about a vicious cycle. Fortunately that bijigettiness has a name. Now that I recognize Ozzie as the lizard/ego, not-so-dynamic duo that he is, I can pat his scaly head and ignore his whiny rants.
And click “Add as friend” as many times as necessary.
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