On Not Sharing

 

I have recently joined the ranks of tweeters and instagramers, to add to my resume of Facebook and blogs. (This resume, by the way, proves that I am not old. A vital point to make post-July 5^th)

It was a coincidence of fortune that I started using twitter and instagram when summer began. This enabled me to be part of my sister’s trip to Hawaii, friends’ trips to L.A., Connecticut, Wilmington, Galvaston, D.C., and just ordinary summertime events like festivals and cookouts. The immediacy of seeing pictures from trips and activities as they are happening makes me feel connected to people’s lives in a way that I would not if I just heard about it the next time I saw them.

Even the somewhat ordinary, but just surprising enough to share, pictures from daily life keep me feeling connected to people; it reminds me of the difference between being roommates and seeing someone once a week. It’s the sharing in life’s everyday happenings that creates community between people, and for me this is what twitter and instagram can foster.

Looking for the next picture or link to post also keeps me interested in what is happening around me, a way of going through the day with the expectation that life will have something beautiful, funny, surprising, maddening, enlightening, or moving that will be worth sharing with others. This anticipatory outlook makes me feel more alive, and for me this is what twitter and instagram can foster.

But turning life’s passing moments into permanent and orchestrated pictures can come with a certain amount of pressure, and for this reason I have on occasion decided not to share. And I think in doing so I discovered the merits of not sharing. Putting aside every directive we heard as young kids about how important it is to share, I want to extol the virtues of not sharing. In our culture, we tend to over-share #understatement. For that reason, I think there is now something very cathartic about keeping something to yourself.

While being connected to a community is a necessary and vital part of being human, it’s also important that I remember how to stand on my own two feet, to breathe by myself, to be content with only myself for company. You see, the flip side to sharing everything all the time is that you never really have to dwell with your own response to something or think about how that article or picture impacts you. Sharing immediately makes us think about how others will react and how others will be affected, and that’s important too. But there are merits to being solitary, and not sharing something you experienced can be a form of solitude.

There are two things that I have seen while walking through downtown in recent months that I did not share. They moved me deeply for different reasons, so deeply in fact that I felt compelled to keep them as my secret. And for some reason, because I did so, these scenes will occasionally come to mind again and I will dwell on what they teach me about being human, about the world around me, and just simply about me. Because these images never made their debut on twitter or instagram, they are somehow more firmly embedded in my mind.

You should try it. The next time you stumble across a beautiful or funny image, just enjoy the moment without trying to think of a witty hashtag or decide on the best filter. See what it feels like to carry this carefully wrapped secret close to you and know that no one else in the entire world saw or experienced that moment quite like you did, and no one else will ever know about it.

PS: I am now going to share these thoughts with everyone on my blog. And I will probably tweet about it and post a link on Facebook.