On Facebook and The Fabrication of Lives

At first I was reluctant. I remember my students telling me a couple years ago about the wonders of Facebook, and me saying, “Yeah, but why can’t you just send your friends email?”

“But no!” they said. “Just try it. It’s all under one roof. You’ll see!”

And oh. Oh-ho, yes. It didn’t take long—old high school friends, college roommates, relatives, acquaintances, current and former students, writers, colleagues—all under my own blue and white roof. I was smitten. Fun! In touch with so many long-lost friends all over the globe. Caught up with people I hardly ever see. It was magical.

It may have been one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made.

Let me explain.

1. I have never had a good shut-off mechanism. If I want to buy a coffee table, say, I will search online for days, weeks, late into the night, obsessively, trying to nail down the exact right one. I cannot let it go. I cannot stop the hunt. So, too, with Facebook.

2. Sometimes I’m more concerned with what to write for my status update than I am with my current book-in-progress (and I have heard this from other writers, too).

3. I have seen newborn babies ushered into the world, celebrated a friend's successful surgery, even followed a couple day by day on their honeymoon via Facebook. It is neither good nor bad to witness these things. In fact, I find it quite compelling and can’t get enough (see #1). But by tearing the mask of privacy off these life-marking moments, I am often left oversaturated yet oddly underfed. I don’t know where to go next, what to think, how to respond. More importantly, in the shadow of all these significant moments, I often find my own life to be lacking. In fact, Facebook has made me very dissatisfied, uncertain and confused about my life. In reading so often about other peoples’ lives that make them sound witty and wonderful and adventurous and generous and creative, there is a dark sense of competitive doom, a gnawing anxiety that my own life will never be enough. As much connection, friendship and pleasure I’ve experienced on Facebook, there has been just as much envy, longing, and loneliness. It makes sense to me why so many people, at one point or another, publicly announce, on Facebook, that they’re taking a break from Facebook. It’s simply too much; it can become damaging to our mental health and well being.

Below, some examples of Facebook's negative effects on my life:

1. An old friend of mine, L, seems to spend so much more time with her two little kids than I do with mine. Plus, she’s remodeling their rooms so cutely and they wear really expensive and cool Hanna Andersson clothes. I’M SELFISH AND DON’T CARE ENOUGH ABOUT MY KIDS OR HOUSE.

2. How could T, who just had a baby, be writing again already? I’M LAZY.

3. How does N know so much about wine? I’M A YAHOO.

4. So Ms. P started running suddenly and lost tons of weight and now wears a size 4? MY STOMACH IS DOUGHY.

5. So this family does nothing but travel all over the country and camp in a tent in gorgeous state parks? BROCKPORT SUCKS.

6. My sister hosted a huge Christmas dinner with 25 relatives at her house. WE ARE ALWAYS ALONE.

7. One of my friends, J, thanks another friend, M, for the great time she had at their party. WHY WASN'T I INVITED?

8. Friend G has been out digging in her garden all day. I LIVE IN MY HEAD.

These are admittedly petty, small-minded and short-lived reactions. But here’s the thing: how many of these posts are accurate portrayals of lives lived? Not many, of course. What's hard to remember is they're just excerpts, incomplete moments polished and shined for the public. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying anyone is out-and-out lying in their Facebook posts, but just as when a photographer takes a picture, there is a choice made between what to put in and what to leave out. It reminds me of when me and my husband and two kids lived in Vietnam and kept a blog. Looking back through the postings and pictures later, I was amazed by how fun it all looked, how exciting, how many smiles & swimming pools & gorgeous sunsets there were. What wasn’t included, of course, were the long hours and days spent holed up in the only room with air conditioning, simply getting through the days. What wasn’t included was how, in the absence of friends or a support network, I felt my depression creeping up on me again, threatening to throw a wet blanket over my mood. What wasn’t included were the many long nights Mark and I would sit outside in the ungodly heat drinking warm beer, slapping mosquitoes on our legs, hoping we wouldn’t get malaria.

Facebook, of course, is the same, although I’ve noticed that when someone does write, “I’m sad today,” there is a general supportive rallying, a rushing to aid the person in need that I actually find quite moving. But it isn’t very common. Mostly we show off a little or amplify the actual experience lived. I remember last Christmas standing on a kitchen chair, photographing some beautiful pink frosted cookies I’d made. I took over 10 shots just to get them exactly right. Then, I posted them on Facebook, and waited for numerous responses that eventually came flooding in. What no one knew was how awful the cookies tasted and how I ended up throwing them out. What no one knew was how making the cookies brought back the grief of my mother's death so sharply that I ended up clutching the kitchen counter and sobbing until my head hurt.

If we all posted truly honest status updates, it would be too worrisome, too raw; we would end up scaring each other—thus, the fiction. The fabrication of our Facebook lives is necessary and understandable, but it can also unsettle with its false bravado, its embellished cheer, its manufactured candor.

On Buddhist Mindfulness and Ambition

Recently, I’ve been stuck and frustrated with a book project—a nonfiction account of the months my husband and I lived in Vietnam with our two small children. A full draft of the book, Viet*Mom, is already written, but after getting comments from my agent and another trusted reader, I’ve come to agree that much of the book needs to be rewritten with a lighter tone and a more irreverent spirit. In its present version, it’s too fact-heavy, sequential, and (it hurts to say this) plodding. What I came to realize was that even an “exotic” locale such as Vietnam could become dull when presented in expository prose. As my agent (who is a terrific editor) put it, “The problem with travel memoirs is that they can be a little bit like looking at someone else’s vacation photos: pretty but unessential. In order to make this work, I think you have to show readers that they will be in for a good ride.”

Indeed. She was right and I knew it.

For weeks I sat with the 300-page manuscript hovering nearby, causing me no end of anxiety, self-loathing, panic, and eventually, dread. Since I’ve spent most of my adult life writing something or other, and having never before experienced this kind of artistic black hole, I knew this was unhealthy—for both me and the book—so I decided to take a “vacation” from it. For two weeks I would not think about it, work on it, touch it, tinker with it, read it, or mess with it in any way. Viet*Mom was off the table. I even announced it to my husband and a few friends to make it official.

Here’s where the Buddhism comes in. Around this same time I was talking to a writer friend of mine who’s recently experienced a very painful divorce she didn’t see coming after 30+ years of marriage. She began telling me about a Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron, she’d been listening to who had helped her tremendously. “She’s a real person,” my friend said. “She’s from New Jersey, and laughs, and is a grandma. She doesn’t take herself too seriously.” At first, I could feel myself disregarding it all. Anything spiritual or religious always got my guard up, but something, thankfully, made me truly listen. “The fact is,” my friend said, “she saved my life.”

Hmm, I thought. That’s pretty dramatic. We paid for our lunches, parted ways, but I found myself later that day searching out Pema Chodron on youtube.com. She used simple words like “stay” and try not to get “hooked” and I went so far out on a limb that I actually ordered one of her CDs from Amazon.

Fast-forward to the present. My decision to take a vacation from my difficult book project has been one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever done for myself. Simultaneously, it seems I’ve become calmer, less worried, more centered. I’ve been trying, however slowly, to live my life in the moment and realize that this is it; this is my life. I've found myself taking long walks, listening more attentively to my daughter who comes home from school full of stories and chatter, enjoying a quiet stretch of a random afternoon without the constant pushing, pulsing pressure to be or do something great and worthy and ambitious. I am learning to “stay.”

But something else has happened: nothing.

Workwise, except for my teaching duties, nothing gets done. I am so “in the moment” that I've extended my Viet*Mom vacation—happily—beyond the two weeks. Of course it’s more pleasant not to work hard at something difficult! Of course it’s more pleasant to drink tea and nap and look out the window. Of course it’s more pleasant to ignore the big brooding difficult book project.

And so I'm left with a question: how do the wonderful, peaceful teachings of Buddhism and living in the present moment and practicing mindfulness and learning to “stay” accommodate ambition? Or, as is my fear, do they kill it?