I Told You So
I’m not on social media of any kind. I don’t watch the news, neither on TV, via Podcasts, the internet nor (haha) the radio like in my parents’ day. Instead, I read the Toronto Star every morning in bed, with cats, and coffee. I start with the advice column which is situated on the back page of the front section and then read backwards from there. This way I can ease into the bad news lurking on the front page. I avoid the Sports and Business sections altogether because I have zero involvement in either of them.
And yet, I do subscribe to newsletters and blog posts of people who write interesting, relevant, and non-bullshitty content that I can actually relate to. Book reviews, fiction writing, other creatives. Genealogy, history, writing tips. What they all have in common is long form writing - the kind of thing one gets to slow down into. No social media-on-repeat slaps upside the head. Rather, an allowance of experience, an invitation to stop and engage.
Turns out, I’ve been ahead of the crowd. Everything I am reading now is about how people are burnt out from being online, how they are taking pauses, digital detoxes, eschewing the banal, the machine-gun fire of images and memes and pithy faux-wisdom sayings. Doom scrolling and influencers are suddenly out; performative offline-ing is in. And. And.
Of course, this is a good thing. Breaking free of the Matrix is the ONLY sane option that is going to save us in these dark times. But, and I do hate this about myself, I desperately want to pull the “I told you so” card.
This is totally not a brag but a fact - I see things. I pay attention. I make connections. I can sniff out a very bad idea from a mile away. The proverbial they are, in my experience, invariably wrong and not to be trusted. Why? Because they are manipulative bandwagoners.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
I think, also, it helps to be an introvert, a bit of an outlier and, well, someone who doesn’t particularly trust other people. This combination affords me the benefit of healthy skepticism. I lack the energy and, therefore, the interest, in climbing atop the wagon. I would need a hand up which means relying on others for help, and there’d be no guarantee that I’d even like what I find once there. So, me, employing the path of least resistance usually just stays put and watches the chaos from afar, gleefully and, yes, often self-righteously because fear will do that to a person, grinning-on-the-inside when it all comes crashing down.
The first time a colleague introduced me to Facebook, I just didn’t get it. What could possibly be the point? And, did I really want to seek out or be found by people from my past who knew me in different and troubling times? Nah. Also, my (perhaps) extreme need for privacy flew in the face of posting all the personal things into the stratosphere to be judged.
The flip side, of course, is the loneliness. I get that people glom onto trends for the perceived social benefits of community and connection. There is something so genuinely human about sharing a commonality of interest and excitement and understanding with others. Truly. But, that impulse has rarely befallen me.
I came across this quote somewhere in my travels:
“What if being social animals doesn’t necessarily mean with other human beings? What if a viable replacement is communication(s) with the natural world of which we are a part.”
Now, that, as you can imagine, resonated with me. Mother Nature is more my style, my vibe. There are no bandwagons in nature. No need to detox from one’s engagement. No pressure to share, share, share intimate photos of applying one’s makeup in a jam-packed, poorly lit bathroom. Nope, in nature I can just be me - ugly, sullen, fearful or the opposite. Doesn’t matter - I just show up. Simple as that.
Circling back to my original point (I do believe there was one), having the gift of sight, of being able to accurately extrapolate the path from here to there is both a blessing and a curse. In one way, it’s like knowing the end of a story before even reading the book so it takes away the mystery. On the other hand, it saves me a whole lot of time and energy because I can see where that path leads and I’d just as soon not bother to pad along it. The problem with that, too, though, is that I see all the people on the path, all the people heading to that troublesome destination. I am witness to the original excitement of a new adventure turning to disappointment and disillusionment. Suffering.
Truth be told, other peoples’ suffering is harder for me to bear than my own. And, because I know from experience that everyone is on their own unique path toward whatever Truth is waiting for them to know, there is little I can do to prevent that suffering. And therein lies my conundrum. I have had to learn (still learn) to let it go. But I still feel angry and frustrated and fearful when the moment of “I told you so” comes to pass and yet I say nothing. Because it wouldn’t do any good anyway and I would just come across as a know-it-all asshole.
The human condition is nothing if not confounding.