Reflections in Facebook
I recently joined Facebook. Initially, it was to connect with business prospects. Seeing as the teenagers these days are all about FB, I thought it might be a great way to drum up more high school senior photography business.
"The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. . ." So, fast forward a couple of months into FB, and I've got 68 "friends" comprised mostly of former Presbyterian School students and colleagues, hometown high school acquaintances, and college sorority sisters. This "collecting" of "friends" is an odd phenomenon. Aside from the Presbyterian crowd, most of my collection is made up of people I had forgotten until I recognized their name on someone else's friend list. It's like a past life treasure hunt of sorts. The degrees of separation are so close that you can spend hours searching through other people's friend lists and find so many people you know that you can't even remember how you got to them or who's FB you perused to end up where you are.
So, as I come across these people from my past, I see my college self with so much more clarity. Thus, one of my favorite quotes from Gilead, "There are visions that come to us only in memory, in retrospect." These people somehow played a role in my life, no matter how important they are to me now. They did, in some way, define me as a young woman. I did not know who I was AT ALL in college. I'm sure many of the girls in my sorority felt the exact same way. We were probably all searching for ourselves.
I was terribly emotional as a college freshman, always comparing myself to my pledge sisters who seemed prettier, smarter, hipper, more popular than me. I never thought they might feel the same way. It was all about my universe. I had jealous rages where I thought my boyfriend liked someone else. Insecure would be an understatement. My face developed acne and I had to take Accutane which made me look like a sunburned, flaky monster for about 5 months. That didn't help my self-esteem.
After my first year in college, I remember a girl still searching for herself but experimenting with different ideas. The sorority wasn't important to me anymore. It didn't define me. I moved on, far away from the Greek life and forgot about most of my sorority sisters.
But now that they are literally coming out of the woodwork, I'm interested in their lives. Were they more like me back then than I thought? I see that they've aged, but gracefully. Most are married with families. I wonder what hardships they've endured? Are the ones I thought were so perfect and beautiful still flawless? Would I think so if I met them now? I find myself pleasantly surprised when one I thought didn't even know I existed asks me to be her "friend" on FB! Ha! So those old insecure college girl feelings are not completely gone. . . they still lie dormant somewhere inside.
Wow! FB is not just connecting, it's REFLECTING.
"The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. . ." So, fast forward a couple of months into FB, and I've got 68 "friends" comprised mostly of former Presbyterian School students and colleagues, hometown high school acquaintances, and college sorority sisters. This "collecting" of "friends" is an odd phenomenon. Aside from the Presbyterian crowd, most of my collection is made up of people I had forgotten until I recognized their name on someone else's friend list. It's like a past life treasure hunt of sorts. The degrees of separation are so close that you can spend hours searching through other people's friend lists and find so many people you know that you can't even remember how you got to them or who's FB you perused to end up where you are.
So, as I come across these people from my past, I see my college self with so much more clarity. Thus, one of my favorite quotes from Gilead, "There are visions that come to us only in memory, in retrospect." These people somehow played a role in my life, no matter how important they are to me now. They did, in some way, define me as a young woman. I did not know who I was AT ALL in college. I'm sure many of the girls in my sorority felt the exact same way. We were probably all searching for ourselves.
I was terribly emotional as a college freshman, always comparing myself to my pledge sisters who seemed prettier, smarter, hipper, more popular than me. I never thought they might feel the same way. It was all about my universe. I had jealous rages where I thought my boyfriend liked someone else. Insecure would be an understatement. My face developed acne and I had to take Accutane which made me look like a sunburned, flaky monster for about 5 months. That didn't help my self-esteem.
After my first year in college, I remember a girl still searching for herself but experimenting with different ideas. The sorority wasn't important to me anymore. It didn't define me. I moved on, far away from the Greek life and forgot about most of my sorority sisters.
But now that they are literally coming out of the woodwork, I'm interested in their lives. Were they more like me back then than I thought? I see that they've aged, but gracefully. Most are married with families. I wonder what hardships they've endured? Are the ones I thought were so perfect and beautiful still flawless? Would I think so if I met them now? I find myself pleasantly surprised when one I thought didn't even know I existed asks me to be her "friend" on FB! Ha! So those old insecure college girl feelings are not completely gone. . . they still lie dormant somewhere inside.
Wow! FB is not just connecting, it's REFLECTING.
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