I've noticed that we've reached a point where everything must be marketable and image becomes more solid than what's directly lived. People think their lives need to be viewed to be lived; where privacy and being private are considered repressive. People are always online, posting about their lives, and everyone wants validation about every aspect of their being. In doing so, the general public has grown to express their happiness ultimately as a comparison to others. It flirts between the lines of living in a world from another man's mind and getting roped into mass media and propaganda from those with a strong influence in manipulating public opinion. Either options lay bare only the desires of those who've lost their individuality, and as I witness my friends and family adapt to the growing times, I question whether everything needs to be a footnote to what once was.
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My happiness especially, has grown to be a comparison of other's level of joy. Frankly, nowadays I don't even know if there is something wrong with that. It's so normalized that it's really putting a strain on how everyone I know interacts with others (myself included), where the end result is usually tied back to digital means of recollection - sharing social medias, posting stories, tweeting your thoughts, etc. If they paid more attention to being present and compassionately honest with who they portray themselves as in the moment, they'd be better off instead of the vanity that necessitates from showing your ‘best’ life online.
I am learning to understand that the random moments that drift off into the past really aren't bad though, sometimes. I don't need to capture every moment in time and post it within the spiderwebs of human connection. The thing I'm discovering more about is to be present with others; not with an explorative or assuming mind, but with one that is attentively there for my close friends and loved ones. There is beauty that comes from living in the moment with no digital aspects attached, and a grounded feeling of enjoying the people around me and where I'm at in life right then and there.
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