
🌻 being able to represent your thoughts in words is for me a very necessary skill in life. In whatever language, words are powerful… They have the potential of sealing a narrative, and the degree of appropriateness depends on who’s telling the story. I believe also, strongly, that words help us as humans to sort out a lot of things , which is what I am now about to do… To be honest, it’s all just a jumble in my head right now and I only hold on to the thread of hope that I would be able to navigate through the denseness of it all.
I feel a bit sad right now, and that’s for a number of reasons. I woke up this morning and decided to subscribe to this monthly internet thingy that we have to do in my country cos there’s no general Wi-Fi 🙄 which I think could be good in a way. I had planned to go out to see one of my friends, I usually prefer not going out but I had promised that I would try. I was about preparing when I decided to just quickly check out a site, an e-learning website that one of my lecturers had suggested, I subscribed for a number of courses that I thought interesting while silently hoping I would eventually go through with them, I felt I was being useful with my life until somehow I managed to open some social media apps. Now I don’t think these apps are terrible or bad but I’ve generally not been the biggest fan of them (whatsapp especially) but for some reason, I still have to be there. So here I was, on instagram flipping through pictures and clicking on the endless stories and then flipping over to whatsapp with the unending life accounts and the million messages I haven’t replied to. I felt for a moment that my life was better say about an hour ago when all I did was stand outside to see the dawn…and to add to that the fact that I started feeling nervous, like the literal nervous feeling we get sometimes…and I ended up deciding to just stay at home.
I remember telling my twin sister that social media makes me nervous and she barely just laughed it away. But it’s true, it does make me nervous and I’m yet to understand why (well the entirety of it)…in a wave of utmost sincerity, I got to understand some of the reasons. A principal one being the barrage of life stories that lies before you every moment from every body you know and a host of others that you don’t really know. I personally rarely put pictures of events and things that happen in my life on the internet, again I don’t totally know why and I’m aware some people just actually love doing it. I think it’s beautiful to share and I don’t think anything necessarily wrong with it (I mean, in a way I’m sharing here) but I get nervous by either the feeling that I’m wasting time doing this (especially the growing “problem” of not being able at first glance to separate necessary content from unnecessary indulgences) or the impression that people have life all figured out…which could either be inspiring or pressurizing, depending on your perception.
Sadly enough this is the truth for me and I had to address it… beneath everything we feel are signals and motives. This new picture perfect world carries with it a lot of things but because I feel I’m talking too much already, I wouldn’t be able to fully address it now…but trust me, the media literally took the world from how it was and flipped it over to a new direction. How do we deal with this? I think different generations deal differently and for my generation which somehow grew up experiencing both sides, it’s a different story. Maybe for those who were born into it – it’s the norm and the media cannot be explained out.
I’m not about to disect the pros and cons of technological advancement or how people are dealing with this new reality (…now that I think about it, it might be an interesting area of research 🤔), definitely there are sides to it but really I’m here to voice out my thoughts, in other words I came to this little corner of the internet to rant 😁 which is one of the many advantages…
…when all has been said and done, life is beautiful, we must understand that and we must learn to adjust if and when we have to. I have to learn, maybe not even for myself alone. People say I’m in my head a lot and I find it hard explaining why I haven’t replied a whatsapp message sent some three months ago… It’s becoming real since on multiple occasions people have approached me with these words “Heyy did I offend you or something?” and I’m like I’m sorry not at all 😐 and then there’s always this confused look of how someone’s physical reality could possibly negate their online presence or in this case, near absence.
My conclusion (somewhat) on this unending discussion is that we all have to try to understand why things are the way they are and not just move with the flow. Understanding yourself really is key, it’s interesting navigating through human personalites and psychological orientations and how all these can influence our attitudes and dispositions (here’s an I interesting book I feel everyone should read “Quiet” by Susan Cain) . We are all individually different yet essentially human and that’s what’s beautiful. Do the things you really love and be better at it everyday. So it’s a fast paced world and there’s this constant pressure to be, I think it’s fine if you’re in that flow but if you can’t deal, you could always take a break and watch the sun rise.
Uhm and happy new month people 😉
Leave a reply to Bukunmi Cancel reply