Contributed by Hager Eldaas

I was sitting in a coffee shop, sipping my coffee after I posted the usual coffee shop picture of the day to my Instagram feed when a friend of mine messaged me saying, “Do you enjoy coffee or just the aesthetic of the coffee shop?” I’m sure his question wasn’t meant to offend me but it brought out a question that I have been already asking myself for a while: do I enjoy certain things or do I enjoy the idea of them, and is there a difference?

Our discussion ended up going to social media and how while he participates in it, he doesn’t celebrate it. This astonished me because for the past few years I felt that social media had significantly upgraded the quality of my life. I looked at it as a way to share and receive daily inspiration, to be reminded often that other people just like me have the things I want and are living the life I aspire to live. It was my tool to be exposed to amazing new businesses and a way to start working on my own aspirations. I asked him why he didn’t celebrate it. “Social media celebrates our practical lives in a way I don’t always feel is justified. Some people HAVE TO take a picture of a scone. Why not enjoy the scone and write down how lucky you are to be able to eat a scone?” He goes on to say, “Well, it’s like, I don’t Instagram when I’m being an asshole so why post the flowers?” I defended myself against that, saying that I don’t feel as compelled to share negativity as I do when sharing positive images.

He was right. Positivity is a trend. What was wrong with that? For a time I believed it was better to ignore the news, because it only spread negativity. I had thought to myself, why should I keep watching the same news that essentially will throw at me the same negative information it has been for years? Why mess up my vibrations and play around with my vortex for something that seemingly I can do nothing about? Why be bombarded with an intense amount of information that will flood my brain and inhibit my ability to focus on my own purpose? It made perfect sense to believe that all the work we do should be inner work that will eventually lead to a world domino effect of people who are bettering themselves.

Until the moment that my friend had messaged me, I had adopted the “positivity only” philosophy. I followed beautiful people who took care of their physical appearance, who went to incredible places and documented it. I completely stopped reading the news. I began working on my appearance and becoming healthier. I socialized more and worked on my self-confidence. I challenged myself to see something new every day.

So why did it bother me so much that my friend asked me that question? A part of me knew that he saw right through me. He knew I wasn’t being true to my nature. He knew how much it annoyed me that I felt like it was a crime every time I slipped and shared an article about an unfortunate current event. I loved reading the news. I loved becoming aware on what is going on around me. I looked at the newspaper as a way to actively find new information, instead of just receiving the latest blog post going viral on my Facebook feed. I chose which articles to read and from which sources. It opened up my eyes, not only to “sad” politics, but arts and travel and food. While Instagram and Pinterest do a good job at showing us beautiful images, they miss a big part of the story. They forget to emphasize on the words that create the vocabulary that makes me fall in love with life, and places, and cultures.

This brought me to the most important question I asked myself last week: Am I incapable of living in moderation? Am I incapable of using social media without letting it tamper with my multidimensional identity? As I looked around me I noticed that it wasn’t just me. It was all my friends and nearly everyone I followed on social media. We all picked a personality for ourselves and refused to expose, at least on social media, anything that defied that personality. Some of us were fashion personalities that allowed ourselves to only post about clothes. Others were “foodies,” some were starving artists, and others political minds. We felt anxious when we slipped and posted something that deviated from the image we were trying to portray. I’ve had full length conversations about my Instagram theme and whether it was best to go with faded or crisp photos and which one would serve my purpose the most, all the time forgetting that I could chose more than one. I forgot why I did things, whether I actually liked them or if I liked how they fit well into my Instagram aesthetic. I essentially forgot that I had layers and that I was allowed to expose all of them.

Our social media has become our resume. LITERALLY. We get hired, especially if we are pursuing more creative fields, based on how well we use these platforms to transcend our message. But why can’t our message be that we are humans, that we can like clothes and philosophy, that we can portray shitty days as “creatively” as we do amazing moments, that I can read the news and still be happy, that I can try to moderate my life and image in a way that pulled me towards my truest self, that it is possible to use social media to grow my business or image and not be consumed by it, that I am capable of existing somewhere in between extremes?