This is not the post I intended to write. My plan for this week was to opine on the topic of transparency – specifically as it relates living one’s life in the digital fishbowl of social media. And that’s the post I wrote and had ready to send in to Cate and Liz on Friday. Then I got a call from my mother...
And suddenly transparency took on a different meaning.
More to the point, this is about what happens when someone chooses to live a life at the opposite extreme – someone like my Aunt Alice.
Alice was the Maid of Honor at my mother’s wedding to my father more than 50 years ago. A stunning blonde with a dazzling smile and hearty laugh, I was always amazed that she never married. In fact, as far as I could tell she rarely even had a significant other around. (Unless of course you count the ever-present Yorkshire Terriers she always seemed to have by her side.)
She always worked – something that was foreign in my world where my mom and all her friends were very much stay-at-home housewives. She always seemed so glamorous – the most fashionable clothing, fabulous jewelry and that flowing golden mane.
This past weekend my mother told me that Alice was in hospice. It seems that she had been battling Cancer – for years – and never bothered telling anyone. Whether she didn’t want to impose, didn’t want to feel needy or just didn’t want to address the illness – well, I suppose all that is moot now.
The point is that for all these years as she perhaps made occasional mention of not feeling well or going to the doctor, the reality was that a vicious disease was eating her away from the inside. The person to whom I looked as an example of what it meant to buck the tide of what was then social norm and be an independent, career woman had opted to show one face to the world, while the truth was something altogether different.
Was this a conscious choice? Was it due to some personal experiences in her life of which no one was aware? Was it generational? There are some studies that have shown even today’s youth have some sense about what they should/shouldn’t share in their online worlds. But as I write this I realize that I’m not really talking about social media transparency, I’m talking about sense of self and how perhaps in our desperate attempt to connect with others and share our lives, we’re forgetting some of the very basic things that make us human.
I started thinking about my own wanderings through the kudzu of on-line conversations, and I realized that while I may proclaim a deep dedication to all that is transparent, that’s not precisely the case.
Talking about what you’re doing, where you’re going and even in some cases what you’re thinking should not be considered a replacement for actually being connected to those around you. While there’s no question that social media also has a strange way of enabling people to over share I wonder if perhaps in embracing the digital realm so powerfully we in some ways detach from who we really are.
If my Aunt Alice were to have been a young woman today, and were she to be, like me, deeply steeped in social media, would she have put forward the same face to the world? Would she have chosen to connect with others sharing her day to day activities but still keeping a cool distance on matters more personal?
Obviously I can’t answer that. But I can look to my own persona and make sure that in being a champion of technology I don’t lose myself in the process.
Author’s note:
Since penning this post, I received the sad news that my Aunt Alice died. I can only hope that in some way her passing can serve as a clarion call of sorts to us all – don’t lose that which makes us human. Connect with others.
About Cathy Brooks:
Her first grade report card said it all. "Cathy likes to participate in any project, so long as she gets to talk." That hasn't changed. For the last two decades this sassy raconteur has toiled in and around media and communications and currently leads the charge on business development for a very exciting venture – Seesmic. The fifth company of French entrepreneur Loic Le Meur, Seesmic is an online media platform that enables global conversation using video as the conduit. When not using her moxie in business, Cathy gambols around San Francisco, spending time training dogs and cooking. You can find her other musings and rants on her blog.