A Social Media Reminder We All Need

I don’t blame social media for all of this, or the people whouse it. I know it get’s a bad rap, the vanity, the time-taking, thehighlight-reeling. I know.

But I think it’s quite alright to experience beauty and towant to catch it- to keep it.

It might be immature, an immaturity that only exists untilyou realize these sort of things can’t be kept.

Like every iPhone photo of a sunset you’ve taken in vain.And every following conversation you had with someone about it,

“Look at this, it was stunning yesterday!”

Speaking and knowing full well the person can only imaginewhat you saw based on the incremental piece of the experience you took withyou. They will never feel in the depths of their own soul what your eyes drankup in that moment.

And this is because the richness of beautiful exists in partonly because it can so easily slip away.

Like indeed a sun that slips beneath the clouds, like adiver into the ocean, leaving you with a hunger to know where it has gone andwhat it’s finding down there.

Or the view from a mountains peak, that not only displays the work of God Almighty without you having to lift your head, but is doubly intoxicating because of the endorphins rushing through your vains because of the hike to get there.

Or a lover who you tried desperately to hold onto, but thefeeling of home in them could only last so long, and the grasping of it onlymade it dissipate even faster.

I don’t blame the ones who try every day to share the moments of their day. I know it’s because when they step into those small pockets of joy in life, they are startled to find how nice it is because they were simply moving through their day anticipating not to run into such a moment.

It’s the inner knowing that in those moments, the only thingthat would make right now feel even better was having another human understandit.

But it’s also that deep knowing that keeps us from fullyfeeling the ever-passing moments of our lives to begin with.

But I have to be honest that my first response wasn’t to greet the wind, but was to try to bottle it up. And maybe it’s this itch that’s keeping us from actually living the lives we post online.

I’m a journalist by trade, I understand the urge to capture.

I guess I just hope we all haven’t become journalists of our own lives, but never being the one in the story itself at all.