I recently attended a sci-fi convention over the memorial day weekend. Comicpalooza took place last weekend and it was a major success. My next blog post will be partly a summary about that and about conventions in general but I wanted to address a side issue about this last convention before that.
I posted a lot of my activities and a lot of the sights and sounds from the convention to my social circle on Facebook. At one point I thought to myself that I was posting too much. I have seen people become obnoxious on social media and post every passing thought and every event that takes place in their lives. One of my peeves about Twitter is that it seems to encourage that sort of thing. Not so much on Facebook but it still happens.
Apart from this I have noticed that some people really don’t like it when you post good news or life events. They tend to feel sadder and find their lives less satisfying. I have a couple of friends that always detail the latest tragedies in their lives and how much worse that they are doing in comparison to everyone else.
When I think about these two categories of people I get self-conscious posting about the good things in my life. I want to be sensitive to the fact that not everyone is having a good time like I am yet I don’t want to limit myself either. I thought about this a lot on the first day of the convention and decided I would go ahead and post my updates and here is my reasoning.
Firstly, I post the positive, the good and the interesting things that happen in my life. I very rarely post the bad. Now that doesn’t mean that bad things don’t happen in my life. They do. In fact bad things have happen to me all the time but they never get mentioned on Facebook. I don’t really see the point in posting these “micro tragedies”. Apart from people telling my how sorry they are, they really can’t do much to alleviate the situation. So I really don’t see the point in doing that. If it’s something big I will post about it but otherwise it doesn’t get mentioned.
Secondly, posting about things that I do, see, hear, experience lets people who might be far away share a little of that. If they were curious about a movie, or about steampunk, or rock climbing, or about night life in Houston then they might learn a bit from me. Maybe they wanted to ask about something but didn’t know how to broach the subject, or they might become emboldened to try something new. You can never tell what one little thing can lead to.
Lastly, sharing my news encourages others to do the same and lets them explore their own interests. Marianne Williamson’s quote from “A return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles” is quite pertinent to this point.
“There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you… As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
I know that people brag. I acknowledge that they sometimes get carried away. We should all strive to be a little more humble in our daily lives. But at the same time, being a shrinking violet and refusing to share is just as bad if not worse than being a braggart. In this life we should look to each other and support each other in whatever way we can.
I say that part of that is sharing your gifts, talents, interests, and even good news with each other.
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