What is it about fame that drives us to do absolutely ridiculous, dangerous, absurd things? There is this drive to be seen, to be affirmed. We all have it. It's both silent and roaring within us.
I took a tour of an instagram account documenting influencers in the wild as they were creating their posts. These posts, the ones with thousands of likes, the ones that earn the coveted blue check mark, garnish reposts and the regular folk trying to recreate them. These are the posts that you will stumble upon while looking at your feed, the ones boomeranging in the middle of the posts by people you actually chose to follow.
These interruptions of the scheduled programming you have chosen to subscribe yourself to, thrust themselves into your line of sight, demanding to be watched. Dance moves, clothing try-ons, make-up tutorials, house DIY, sports clips, funny memes. It is an endless supply of distraction.
I have clicked on many of them, taken on a ride into the world created there. It always leaves me feeling a little less confident in my life, my style, my day. Should I buy more clothes? How do I get more followers? How can I get that look? Am I physically capable of doing that dance? If you are over 40, I am gonna go ahead and save you the time and say no, you probably should not try it.
This IG account took me on a journey of looking into this world from a different angle, from the outside, observing the creation of these snippets of what the online community now calls talent. It shows not the finished product, the filtered and perfected goals, but rather the effort and absurdity that goes into the creation of it all. It can all be quite laughable, to see the fails. To observe the context where men and women alike are dancing in the middle of a crowd to no music, to see the waves taking a posing beauty down, to see the yoga pose from someone who clearly has no real balance.
But there we are, regular folk, guilty of the same thing. We are posing with our coffee in hand, finding the light and the angle in front of the mural that says, "Look, I was here, doing a thing!"
It doesn't have to ooze sexuality, for us to buy into this narrative. The line of thinking is, "Hey, look here, see me, see me doing things." Is there nothing we are not willing to sell ourselves to gain? After the laughter of the silliness of it all, there is something left in my heart that I cannot quite figure out what to do with. It compels me to want to take action. It leaves me aching in my head and heart. What causes us as humans to be so hungry to be seen? To be valued? What causes me to do it?
When I consider my own heart, I can only land in one place. I am empty. We are empty. There is a hollowness in our souls. We keep drinking, and never find our thirst truly quenched. We are so parched. Mouths and souls a dry and barren wasteland. Each looking around our lives for ways to ease some of the burn for relief.
Here is where I land, again and again. We are empty because the very places we keep going to fill us always disappoint. They never last. At best they provide momentary pleasure and as our thirst temporarily weakens its incessant demand to be relieved.
We have been trained, deep in our minds, to respond to dopamine rushes we get with every like, with every comment. Our bodies have been re-wired to need a constant flow of affirmations. And the fact is, we will keep going back to the source of that rush, no matter how many times it fails us.
When I see a woman, barely dressed in the middle of the street, twerking or posing, my heart isn't filled with judgement. Well, maybe at first it is. But after that comes a flood of other emotions and thoughts. It is filled with an ache for her. She doesn't know. She doesn't know the truth. I ache for her to know. I ache to remember it myself.
We have forgotten. She doesn't know that she is precious. That she is valuable. She doesn't know her true worth. She is not just a body. I want to run up to her, and pull her into my arms and speak life over her. "Dearest sister. You are beautiful, but not because of this. Why, dear one, why are you giving away parts of yourself? Don't you know how treasured you are? Think of the most treasured thing in your life. Now would you give it away for free to anyone and no one? Why dear one, are you viewing this life, this body, this soul as so cheap, and devalued? To give it away to everyone and no one. Is it not a precious thing you long after, is there not so much more than empty applause?"
But we don't know. And we all forget. We might not be twerking on a median, or posing on the beach. But we all forget, and it impacts how we view this life we have. I want to be seen. I want to be heard. I want to be valued. And I know in my heart I am wiling to devalue things precious to me, to gain those things from others, from everyone and no one. Just one look at my photos on my phone, and you will see 20 photos of me and my puppy later, my soul screaming, "Look here, look at me! I am doing something! I am worth looking at! Take note of me."
Goodness, there is so much more for us than living this way. There is a clamoring of the soul that ought to be still and quiet. Not because our souls shouldn't sing, or that we shouldn't be seen. Quite the opposite really. The beauty we are after is delightfully richer. We just have forgotten how to see it.
Just a scratch of the surface here. Part 1 of more.
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