The other end of the funnel
If you go to Bali, I’d love to hear all about it, in an actual conversation. (Image by Sushuti)
It takes only a few seconds of Facebook to throw off my equilibrium. I believe this is exactly what it was designed to do.
Even if I went there for a specific purpose, I come away feeling discontented and uncomfortable, as though I accidentally read a friend’s diary. In a sense, that’s what I’ve done.
As a kid growing up, I didn’t know what parties I was missing due to my relative social awkwardness or what opportunities I was losing out on due to my family’s relative lack of wealth. I wasn’t even privy to conversations in which these things were hinted at. I existed in a small world, focused on the people and pastimes that mattered most to me.
This state of being, in which I pay attention to a narrow set of inputs, still feels like the best and truest one for me. It is not the way toward fame or massive financial success. It does not lead to impressing others or having great stories to share at social events or on social media. It is a journey of joy and contentment.
When I look at what other people are doing in real life, I can make a genuine connection with them. Their achievements inspire me. There’s Susan, who is still rowing several times a week in her mid-seventies. There’s my sister-in law, winning 10Ks, working as a nurse, and creating beautiful and thoughtful handmade gifts while raising three kids. And my friend Michael, who is in a few different bands and always has more in the works in addition to being a gifted restaurant professional and artist.
But there’s something about social media that turns the most profound achievements into advertisements. I’m not seeing this person for who they are; I’m seeing what they want me to see, presented in a format that will bring the greatest amount of profit to a giant public corporation. Soon enough, I’m questioning my own decisions and priorities and achievements until I slam Pandora’s box shut and get the hell out of there.
Our life choices—where to live, what to do, whom to do it with, et cetera—are tightly limited out of necessity. No one can do it all. However, social media, and more broadly the wilds of the Internet, expose us to the other end of the funnel. We see all of the routes that could be taken, all of the most successful exemplars of each of those routes, and the crowds of people relentlessly clamoring for attention in an attempt to become one of those exemplars. There’s an illusion that everyone else is doing all of it, and we’re hopelessly behind. In reality, everyone else is doing some of it, and seeing all of it, all at once, is naturally overwhelming.
Because I grew up in a family without a lot of extra resources in a small town before the Internet existed, I know that this parade of possibilities is entirely optional. I still remember what it was like to be without it, on long sunny summer afternoons when it was just me and Watership Down for hours. I still remember a time when I didn’t know that college existed or that being a lawyer is supposedly more impressive than being an electrician. It was peaceful and pleasant, and I’ve figured out how to get back there again.
I’m not saying that ignorance is my preferred state of being, but selective ignorance is a pretty good practice. I don’t need to know everything about everyone. I don’t need to keep up just for the sake of keeping up. I can protect myself from getting rattled by what is irrelevant and unimportant. I can avoid hanging out at the top of the funnel. I can heavily suppress what I allow to get through my filters, and it’s even better if I can set up my life so that I don’t need the filters in the first place. In practical terms, this might mean staying off of social media, avoiding push notifications on my phone, getting the news from articles instead of TV, eschewing gossip, and so on.
The other day, we celebrated the launch of my cousin Chris’s second science fiction novel for middle grade readers. As soon as I found out about the launch event (on Facebook, of course), I booked a cross-country flight so that I could be there in person.
In addition to being a published writer, Chris is a developer at one of the most popular video game companies in the world and a devoted husband and father. Could I be jealous that he’s made his childhood dreams come true? I guess so, but I’m not. He’s not a profile on some website—he’s an actual human person who has gotten to where he is through his own filtering process, making the most of his free time by shutting out the unimportant. I’m always rooting for him. Together, on the night of the launch party, in person again after so long, we were all rooting for him. His success was our success.
That’s not always the way it feels when we are reading the magazine profile of some insanely high-achiever or coming across the Facebook post of another that we happen to know personally. But what we’re really seeing is a possible path, one that we may or may not have taken. We can’t travel them all. But when someone else does, we can enjoy a bit of vicarious thrill and a little inspiration. And if we’ve opened ourselves up to too much, we can draw inward and spend some time getting centered again, finding a renewed appreciation for our own journey.
