Social media is a strange entity.
One minute you’re able to have beautiful conversations in messages and converse with family across the country, and other times strangers are showing up in your “world” and pushing buttons that you do not really even want pushed in the first place.
I personally have a love/hate relationship with social media. Since it’s inception, back in the early days of MySpace when this form of socialization became really popular, I truly have noticed a distinct shift in how people relate to one another. Suddenly it is if we exist under a microscope – and the strange part is that it is an imposing microscope that we place upon ourselves. There is nobody that enforces we are to maintain an online presence, or read articles online and the accompanying opinions, but we do it because it has become some strange status quo to participate.
There have been studies since the early 2000’s that have shown an increase in anxiety levels within developed societies as a result of these social media. Even I feel that sometimes. Before social media I felt a modicum of the “comparison game” that everyone naturally feels at some point or another in life comparatively to what I do now. I knew more distinctly where I wanted to be and the steps to get there. Listening in on others and wondering if they had some piece to the puzzle that I was lacking wasn’t a practice I indulged in. But now, as I mindlessly scroll in waiting rooms and between meetings I’m bombarded with a lot of differing messages from a lot of different people. Some people are off traveling the world and relay back messages about how that is the meaning of life. Others are investing in business endeavors and correspond back that THAT is the secret to life, others become politically invigorated and report back the subjective truth of matters, others have children and families that they post about nonstop and ruminate about how meaningless life was before that.
I don’t have the answers, and apparently my answer would be lost among the sea of prolific insights already dispersed amongst vast social media channels.
But tonight, for the first time in a really long time I felt close to coming into my own secret.
I was thinking about what to write for a blog. I was trying to become inspired by looking at various social media outlets to garnish inspiration because as of late I’ve felt rather uninspired in writing. Doing so at first filled me with a bit of despair. There are so many conflicting opinions on things, so many arguments happening online, so many dividing factors to each message that it can really throw your balance off.
Balance is something I strive for. Balance is something that Gooddegg strives for. Balance is quite literally in our mission statement. We are a diverse, multicultural company. On any given day we are corresponding with one another from various countries. I do not know the intimate details of everyone’s life, but we have something that we work forward with together.
It got me thinking about how segregated this tool that is supposed to bring us together has made us, and why I am glad that Gooddegg uses it’s e-commerce platform to branch out and attempt to bring balance to the world.
Then I decided to flip the script. Sitting on my porch tonight, listening to the drifting music from a neighbors open window, the birds chirping, the cars passing by and the gentle sound of wind chimes I looked down and realized I was sitting on wicker and the inspiration hit me, that like wicker we are various useless parts unless we use our assets to be woven in together to build upon something bigger, better, for others.
That is why I love Gooddegg, why I am proud of what they do. Why I understand that I do not have to agree with everyone on everything. What I can do is take time to unplug, truly connect, and when things start to feel surreal in the digital world take a moment to realize that the secret to life isn’t a pretty picture, a 140-character Tweet. For me, and I can only speak for myself, it’s how you handle yourself at the checkout line, how you respond to criticism, and how you use your gifts to do something for the benefit of others. Because we’re all woven together like wicker, and someone’s gonna sit on us eventually (I think that’s, like, a metaphor for mortality, or whatever.)
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