During no other time in history has the forming and dissolving of relationships been so public. The advent of social media has made the lives of the masses who choose to engage in it much more public. It adds a very interesting layer to this process of relationship. We now have to "manage" our "online presence". We have new words associated with friendships and relationships... such as "unfriended" or "blocked". Nobody ever really taught most of us how to manage our online presence, because nobody ahead of us ever heard of such a thing.
We are online pioneers.
So, we wing it.
Though this post is not meant to be critical, I have noticed something that unnerves me just a little. I have witnessed a number of long-term relationships crash and burn within my facebook circle. Some manage their online presence more tactfully than others, but almost without fail, I see one commonality... the sterilization of the online presence.
Every trace of that ex-whatever is wiped out of profiles.
Gone.
Deleted.
Erased.
Eliminated.
The online presence is sterilized as though eradicating a deadly bacteria.
And it unnerves me because it is history. I see social media (both this blog and my facebook page) not just as an in-the-moment whimsical time killer, but as an account of my life's history. Both, but mainly this blog, are a running autobiography, of sorts.
Editing folks out of my online presence is essentially rewriting my history. I'm not sure I'm okay with that. If I took the time to record something with or about someone in the "pages" of my online presence, then the event, thought, or emotion was significant in that moment. Just because I may now feel very differently does not mean that it was not valid in that moment. And, because I chose to record it, it becomes a part of my personal history.
What I am in this moment is hollow and empty if I rewrite the history that made me.
I often try to filter things through my kids. My online presence is their history, too. While displaying pictures of an individual from a past relationship in your home would just be weird, it's not the same with social media. My marriage really happened. 18 years of life really happened. And because of that, four kids really happened. And they deserve to have some preservation of that aspect of their history.
While I am still married, it is now reduced to little more than a business arrangement and the proverbial handwriting is on the wall. I'm not trying to sound holier-than-others, but I have had a season to ponder... more than many in this situation. I'm not making guarantees, but if divorce happens, I'm thinking I won't sterilize my history. While I have made some adjustments to what is being posted in the present, I'm hoping to leave history intact. As a blogger, I think an accurate history of the past lends a richness to the present that can be lost to sterilization.
A related event occurred today that prompted this post. I have my facebook account set to show memories... things that have been posted "on this date" over the course of my seven-plus year account. I had a significant-to-me multi-decade friendship go bad a few years back. The details aren't important to this post, but the friendship is not salvageable. I believe in forgiveness but that does not always equal restoration, and in this case it does not. I toyed with sterilizing this person from my blog and facebook history, but I chose not to. (They have been unfriended, but the past content is intact.) I have kept it in my history as a less-significant-than-a-spouse test of my theory that one should carefully weigh social media sterilization. Today, a link to a blog post written about this friendship (when it still was a friendship) popped up in my facebook memories. At first, some of the pain started to resurface. But, along with the pain was a reminder of lessons that have been learned. As I've pondered it throughout the day, it cemented the idea that I am who I am today partly because of both the good and bad aspects of that significant piece of my history.
Time will tell, but it has been said, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger"... I think I may just continue to run with my history non-sterile.
2 comments:
This is something I had not considered before, but a healthy perspective I think I agree with.
This is well said Jeff. Honestly, one of my favorite posts!
I wish more people had this level of maturity when it came to separation, divorces, etc - I think the victims (the children) would have a easier time of it. The past is the past and can not be changed. You can pretend it never happened, or you can choose to learn something from it. Trying to "forget" (sterilize) the past will (I fear) only lead to repetition.
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