The Great Debate

To facebook or not..that is the question. Sometimes I wonder what life would be like without social media. It’s one of those things that you lived without for so long, but now you don’t know what you did before it. I love FB because it has given me the chance to reconnect and keep in touch with so many amazing people that I would probably have lost touch with forever. Not only did I reconnect with them, but I know what they had for dinner and what color their bedroom walls have been painted. But at what point do you walk away from the screen and actually have a conversation with the person beside you? Are we losing precious opportunities with the ones we love in order to share our personal lives with anyone who cares to pay attention? And what is it about human nature that makes us want to peek into the daily routines of someone we haven’t seen in 30 years? I think it all started during the dawn of reality TV. “This is the true story of seven strangers picked to live in a house and have their lives taped. Find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real.” I mean who can forget Puck? We got sucked into watching people live their lives. I think Facebook is almost the same thing. However, like TV, it’s been edited. Edited to make it more dramatic, to make it look more beautiful, to make it look more romantic. Someone once said that if you look at a picture of a perfect family on Facebook, ask yourself what you think happened right before or right after that picture was taken? We can make ourselves look like whoever we want on the Internet. But that might not be who we really are. I love Facebook and I always will, and I really feel like i’ve created a great bond with a lot of people I’ve reconnected with. My little community that I cheer on when they do their first 5k or welcome a new child into their life. The ones I cry for when they’ve lost a parent or have a sick child. The same ones that tell me where I can find a good plumber on a Saturday afternoon. This is what I love the most about Facebook. But it’s important to keep in perspective that what you see is not always what you get. Don’t compare your family to that perfect family photo that your best friend from first grade just posted. And don’t forget to enjoy the real people in your life that are sitting to the right or left of you. If you can find that perfect mix of the living in the real world around you and enjoying the community of friends you have online then life is good. You may or may not want to know that I went to Lafayette Coney Island last night, or that I will request a new hotel room if I find one little hair that doesn’t belong to me, or that Louie just lost his first tooth not long ago. If you don’t want to know that, then don’t read it. If you do then I welcome you to my life. And thank you for the advice, I’ll be keeping my hair long for a while 😉

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