Curated social media
We often talk about social media, and the time it eats up for most people.
The platforms allow you to curate the way you present yourself to the world. We share the good photos, the tidy rooms, the tasty meals, the fun with friends.
Less often shown are photos of disorder, discord, or the third night in a row of leftovers for supper.
The result of that kind of sharing can be shame. If everyone else is having fun, eating gormet food, and living in a beautifully designed and orderly space, what is wrong with me????
And yet...
I still use both Instagram and Facebook, although Instagram gets more of my time.
Everyone who knows me well, knows my living space is rarely perfectly organized and uncluttered, but those who only see my feed may not get that impression.
I take pictures when gratitude becomes my focal point. I frame the photos so that the thing I am noticing will take center stage.
Today I took a photo of freshly baked bread. I took a photo only of the bread, cooling on the counter. It was zoomed in, so that the goodness of the bread would take center stage, and not the clutter elsewhere on the counter.
I didn't crop out the clutter because I wanted to give a false impression. I cropped out the clutter because the bread making had nourished me. Pulling fragrant loaves out of the oven and smelling them as they cooled connected with a deeper sense of gratitude, that overshadowed the mess it took to bake the bread. It also energized me for the clean-up, which is, after all, a part of the goodness of the job. I don't always remember that. When I took the photo, I'd not cleaned up yet, but I have now. Three of the loaves are in the freezer and the fourth will be part of breakfast tomorrow.
All of that cannot show in the photo. I also can't show what it feels like to push and shape the dough, or the beauty of having been part of mixing and baking. I can't capture the amazement that still is surprised, after all these years of baking, that the yeast did it's job, the bread rose, the slashes spread out and created art on the crust.
But I can take a photo. It isn't a photo of perfect bread, but it is a glimpse of the goodness of baking. If I took a wide photo that had all the things in the kitchen, including the bread cooling on the counter, it would not at all capture how I felt today having finally baked bread again. You would not see it.
So I fill my feeds with the best curated photos I can take.
Truthfully, the goal is at least partly mindfulness.
When I go for a walk, it is often easy to let my worries take over my attention. I can miss all the things that are around me. I'll walk right past the winter grasses that are so beatiful with their gradients of color and their seed heads silhouetted against a January sky. But if I have my phone ready, I'm present. Who'd have thought the phone would make me more mindful?
I don't always need it, but having it helps.
We walk most nights, trying to time it for the sunset. I don't take pictures every night. But somehow, the fact that I have taken sunset pictures frequently makes me notice more. These walks are not aerobic, because the sky changes so quickly.
The other night, as we watched the sun set behind the lake, I wondered how the world can contain this kind of beauty...indescribable beauty...and also the horror of the way the world is, the way people treat each other.
We can't forget about that other, or working to make things better. So many people are hurting. So many things are wrong.
Maybe it is the sun on the bellies of the geese, and the colors or the sun going down, reflected in the glassy waters of the lake; maybe it is those beautiful things that remind us there is also goodness. Maybe they give us the strength to get up in the morning to try again to be better, to be part of making things more whole, more just.
And so, I curate my feed, in order to nourish my own spirit,
my own hope,
and possibly yours as well.
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