Me, Too

A friend of mine posted this article on Facebook the other day: "Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy". The gist of the article is that GenY people, born between the late 70s and mid-90s, are unhappy because of the expectations they have on life - expectations that they're special, and therefore should be extra-successful, not like everyone else. There's a gap between expectation and reality, and that's what makes for unhappiness. Happiness, the author says, is Reality minus Expectations; if the expectations exceed reality, you end up with a negative balance.

Now, I'm not a GenY person, I'm a GenX'er (that's those of us born in the 60s and 70s, between the Boomers and GenY). But what this article is saying applies just as well to us. See, one of the points it makes is that GenY'ers are set up for overblown expectations because of what they see around them, namely on social media. What they - or rather, we - see is the carefully crafted public image of friends, relations and former classmates, the image that is presented to the world via Facebook, Twitter, and whatever else is out there. And guess what? That image is always a pretty one - a flattering profile picture, stories of success, status updates about what a good time we're having at our resort vacation, and so on. So when we take a look around our virtual reality world, everyone else seems to be doing well - everybody else but us.

So do I do it any differently? Nope, I don't. My status updates are chirpy, funny (well, there are great jokes circulating on Facebook), occasionally sentimental, often trivial, sometimes triumphant. But what I don't tell you is that at 4:30 that morning, I was lying in bed sobbing into my pillow because I woke up early (again) and depression crashed in on my head, making me feel like a failure on all fronts. I don't tell you that I've gained thirty pounds in the last three years and hate it (and I certainly don't post a profile picture showing off that fact). I don't tell you that those thirty pounds are the direct result of my habits - too much sitting, too much eating, too much wine, and too little of whatever else one is supposed to do to counteract the poundage accumulation and be generally healthy. I don't tell you these things because I value my privacy, but mostly because vulnerability of this kind of profoundly scary.

It is for all of us. But if you listen to Brené Brown, she'll tell you that it's that very vulnerability that is the pathway to health (emotional health, anyway). Those two little words, "Me, too!", are immensely powerful. And the realisation that behind it all our friends' glowing public profiles hide a whole lot of mess can go a long ways. Our lives are messy. My house is dirty (no, really, it is. I'm not one of those people who apologise for the state of a house that looks like a picture from Better Homes and Gardens. I've got mould on my window frames, dust bunnies in the corners of the rooms, a rim of grunge around the bottom edges of my cupboards, and, please, let's not even talk about the storage area in the basement.), my children didn't turn out the way I had anticipated back in my idealistic twenties (I thought if I raised them "right", they would become a certain kind of person. They didn't. I can't show them off as products of my superior parenting or homeschooling. They're great people whom I like a lot, but they're not what I thought they would, or should, be.), and I never yet did do that amazing, world-saving thing that I thought I would do with my life (I was never quite sure what it would be, just that there would be one). My whole lifestyle - heck, my whole life - isn't what I had expected, what, twenty-five years ago, I would have thought was the "right" way to be.

And if I've ever given the impression in public that my life is, in any shape or form, perfect, I apologise. Because it isn't. I can't stand people who have it all together, who exude that smugness of "I'm right, and my life is right, and if only you did what I do you wouldn't be such a [insert insulting epithet]". Well, I certainly don't have it all together. Not by a long shot. I'm still working on that balance, the happiness equation from that article - Happiness = Reality - Expectations. We usually can't do much to alter the "Reality" variable of that equation, but the "Expectations" one, that's changeable. Our expectations are shaped, in part, by what we see around us, what we perceive others' reality to be. Admitting to who we really are, what our actual reality is, might help make the answer to that equation into a positive number for each other.

And just by way of illustration, here's a picture of Johnny and Steve (Steve just got a cat tongue wash, that's why he's looking a little exhausted). They never have problems with this issue, even though Johnny, for one, well might have: all other cats have four legs, he's only got three. Talk about a gap between expectation and reality! But he never lets it bother him. Maybe it's because he doesn't go on Facebook much.

Life, the Universe, and Expectations. Me, too, friend, me too.

Information

I was climbing into my car this morning, setting out to chauffeur the offspring to their hallowed halls of learning. As I turned the key in the ignition, the radio came on. "... At least thirty-seven people were killed in an attack in Northern Nigeria this morning..." I hit the "off" switch. And immediately felt a stab of guilt. Don't I care about the people in Northern Nigeria? Don't I need to stay informed?

And as I was rolling down the road, I was mulling this over in my mind. Yes, of course I care about the people in Northern Nigeria. But does that mean I need to hear about everything that goes on there? Do I really need to be informed of everything that happens in the world? And the simple, plain answer is "No". Because the fact is that it's utterly impossible to be informed of everything that goes on in the world. It's utterly impossible to be informed of everything that goes on in my immediate surroundings, let alone my town, let alone my province, let alone... You get my drift?

I laughed really hard when I found out about the iPhone app that lets you type and walk at the same time. The phone's little camera films what goes on in front of you, and then tells you on the screen, so you don't have to bother looking up and seeing your surroundings for yourself. Some versions go even further: they tell you what's there, they conveniently label it for you ("Restaurant A", "Telephone pole", "Restaurant B"...). There's even a word for that: "Augmented Reality". No, really!

And that, I think, is actually a rather apt description of what's being fed to us through the media under the guise of "information". Augmented reality. Filtered through the eye of the camera lens, the news reporter's choice, the information service website: "item to be shocked at", "item to find ridiculous", or "item to be excited about". Without those filters, we're barely capable of reacting on our own any more. And that could become a real problem.

You see, I am firmly convinced that our human capacity for compassion, for being moved by hearing of other people's plight, has a purpose. It's meant to move us to action. Hearing of thirty-seven Nigerians killed in an attack pushes my compassion buttons, disturbs me and moves me. But it doesn't move me in any useful direction. It disturbs the waters of my mind (which are a murky pond at the best of times) for no purpose other than the disturbance itself. And I really don't need that. My hearing of the events in Nigeria will not do the Nigerians one bit of good - and while my emotions are being disturbed by something I cannot do anything about, I miss the opportunity of being moved to action on behalf of my neighbour who might be needing a helping hand with something.

We're in grave danger, in today's information society, of being so informed we become inbred, ingrown - so informed we become de-formed.

Information is good, is necessary, is useful - but we need to choose which use we put it to, which filter we apply or allow to have applied for us. I no longer want news services to augment my reality for me. "OFF".

Life, the Universe, and Information. Who's augmenting your reality?