No Photos Please.

Yesterdays blog “Two Faced?” sparked dialog.  Many wrote in eager, head nodding agreement that the favorite social network was beginning to resemble far less of real face-time and far more a brag book on hallucinogens.

It made me think deeper about our cyber-files; what they hold, and more importantly, what they don’t hold.  While, thanks to Photoshop, we can spin the good days into bright, shiny, “wouldn’t you like to be me” photos with personalized shout-outs and tags to our favorite friends, I have to wonder where we keep the files of the not so good days.   After all, they are the other 50% of our life experience that makes us unique and yet you never hear:

“Hey, let’s watch the video of the day Suzie got her rejection notice from Yale.”

or…

“Wanna see the slides of my divorce?”

or…

“Honey, Eileen’s cheating on Brad.  Group picture!!!”  –or…

“Junior got arrested for possession!  Let’s blast an e-mail!”

While we might see the occasional WTF? or FML!  in the space we find much more comfortable reserved for the good of status quo; rarely will we boast the bad and the ugly.  It may be part of our fabric, but we prefer to tuck it far into the lining of our sorry overcoat and be done with it.

What we fail to recognize is that it’s not the bad stuff that defines us, it’s how we handle the bad stuff that matters.  What we say, or don’t say.  What we do, or don’t do.  How we stand tall or simply walk away.

It seems that life is 50/50.  We definitely get the good stuff, the laugh lines prove it, but we will also experience the harder parts, the parts that ensure we remember the salty taste of tears.  The parts that test our faith.

The parts we decide not to post.

Somewhere there is a very powerful filing cabinet.