Nothing is allowed to be real these days. Simple. Even boring, if it’s called for. Instead, we have clickbait titles to everything, posters and proposals for a homecoming dance, and people who don’t believe you have to BE happy as long as you APPEAR happy.
This is NOT okay, people. Why?
1. Not everything has to be shiny. My weekly roundup email from our financial site today was titled “Look how pretty your money is this week.” Wait, what?!?
What did they do? Wrap it up in spanx so it would fit smoothly into some sequined dress? Was there lipstick involved? Glamour photography? People, my money isn’t pretty. It isn’t supposed to be pretty. It’s supposed to be there. It’s supposed to be working for me. It’s supposed to be a lot of things, but pretty isn’t one of them. And my program that tracks all of that…shouldn’t be worrying about what my money looks like. I don’t mind a non-ugly site. I don’t mind useful graphics and graph functions. But seriously, treat my money as a serious thing. Because it is.
2. Appearance can be faked. My husband’s proposal of marriage didn’t involve candles and posters and videos. And I can tell you, it still happened. All these showy things for little deals like dances and such don’t really mean that much. They don’t prove anything about who the guy or girl are. They don’t prove the depth of love (or attraction or commitment or whatever). They are a competition for likes and hits, which are then equated with value or influence.
My non-showy husband asked me to marry him on a hike in the woods. It wasn’t flashy, but it was entirely genuine. It was him. It was us. It was perfect. And it wouldn’t have gotten more than a few likes on Facebook. And that’s okay. I want more of life to be like that proposal because we’ve built a real marriage on that day, and that is a very good thing.
3. We are people, not brands. The Culture Translator this week talked about a study done with teens recently that showed teens view themselves as brands, not people. So everything related to their actual name had to be positive or appear happy, in order to protect their brand. But we are NOT brands. We are people. Real people with emotions and ups and downs, and true connections cannot be made if we sell that out for a logo and in-right-now color scheme.
We can be actually happy. But it means going deeper. Loving harder. Risking greatly. Making mistakes (sometimes gigantic mistakes). Saying the wrong things while we’re learning what’s a better thing to say.
We can be real. We are supposed to be real. We were created to be real. And it’s okay to buck our culture and live real. Whoever we are and wherever we live.
October 14, 2017
I’m just going to leave a “Like” here. Lol And an agree! 🙂