instagram, social media, and keepin’ it real

If you’ve been around here long at all, you know I love Instagram.  I love the glimpses into people’s lives, I love the little snippets of what they have to say, I love the lack of links to political opinion pieces.

{these were really good, but that powdered sugar was everywhere about 20 seconds later}

But there’s kind of a weirdness going on with Instagram (and pretty much all social media) right now. There’s a definite tension between “keeping it real” and “keeping it pretty”.  A common complaint I hear over and over is that when we only see snippets of people’s day-to-day, or the “highlights”, our lives seem pretty lame by comparison. I know some people have sworn off the platform entirely because they can’t handle being confronted with other people’s “perfect” lives.

{guess how long this hug lasted before someone clawed someone else’s face}

As someone who loves Insta, I understand the struggle.  I don’t want anyone to feel bad about their lives.  We all have our struggles.  But I also know that we live in a world that has a lot of ugliness- in the news, in our communities, and sometimes even in our homes.  So I like seeing people’s small joys. I like seeing their sweet babies and fun vacations and new cars.  I like their happy news and clean counters and perfectly photographed meals. I like it because I’ve lived enough years at this point to know that joys and babies and clean houses and food on the table isn’t a given for everyone.  And it’s not even a possibility to have those things all the time for anyone.  These things are worth celebrating, worth capturing, worth sharing.{fairly certain she was making this face because she was poopin’ all up in that onesie.}

Yes, it’s worth sharing the struggles, too.  For every picture I have of my kids holding hands, there are a hundred pictures I didn’t take of them beating on each other.  For every picture of the perfect picnic we had for lunch, there are billions of non-pictures of mac and cheese with hotdogs.  And that’s ok.  Sharing the good doesn’t mean that we’re trying to pretend the bad (or the mediocre, or the boring) isn’t there.  When I post a picture of the cake I just made, you had better believe that there will be a sink full of dishes behind it.  Or when there’s a picture of my kids on an idyllic hike, you know I had to argue with someone for 45 minutes about appropriate shoe choices. I’m not pretending I didn’t have to debate flip-flops vs. hiking boots… it’s just not really worth stopping to appreciate that aspect of my day.{much mopping. so water. lots mess.}

As we move into an age where social media allows us to “edit” our lives, it’s going to be more and more important that we ground ourselves in the reality of our friendships and values, so that we can continue to celebrate the joys in others’ lives, as opposed to becoming jealous or jaded. It’s when we lose this mooring that we start worrying about other people’s “reality” based on their social media presence.{i ran away to target because my husband and I were being snarky with each other}

We shouldn’t have to go out of our way to “keep it real” because it’s all real.  And it’s all wonderful.  If you look at someone’s Instagram or Facebook account and think, “Wow. Their life is so good,” that’s because it is good.  So is yours. Every single little square could be captioned with, “Life is good,” and that would be the reality. Not “Life is easy,” or “Life is pretty,” but unequivocally, “LIFE. IS. GOOD.”