A TED Talk I listened to in the car a while back advised people who use social media that social media is not a good place to “process pain.” That made sense to me at the time. As I motored along feeling OK about my driving and the face I present to the rest of the traffic, I thought about how often the remarks I leave under my friends’ posts about their ordeals and broken hearts are less heartfelt than they appear, a dutiful exercise whose perfunctory execution is, I hope, well disguised. Sometimes it even annoys me a little to have to respond to the posts and look at the photos — so many, many posts, all crying from the core of people I should suffer with but don’t want to.
At St. Mary’s decades ago, a religion teacher had us write little essays about what kind of women we wanted to be. I wrote that I wanted people to see me as kind and so I was trying to be kind to them. The sister wrote in the margin of my paper that, someday, I would learn to be kind to the people because they needed help.
Sister, I’m not quite there yet.
But at least I don’t expect to be the center of all attention. Since my mom died, social media has become such a source of unexpected comfort that I am overwhelmed by how grateful I feel to the people who post. Even the formulaic phrases, the “thoughts and prayers,” are like being tapped on the shoulder and handed a daisy.
They feel good. I feel a part of a community, and I am fine with the thought that it is a dutiful community. I think that belonging with people who are willing to do the duties of friendship is real friendship. Social media compassion is real in its own way. Different, but helpful.
Also, the social media contacts are less exhausting than the face-to-face condolences because they are less intimate. Exerting their kindness in person, my friends pull from their own well of sorrow and there’s always danger that the weight of that sympathy gets the better of them, and they are pulled down. Then we have to cling to one another, weeping under grocery store lights, surrounded by cabbages and jars of nuts. I value that intimacy because it is real — don’t misunderstand, we know one another better as we walk apart. But all this intense emotion leads to dehydration. Dehydration creates kidney stones.
And we will pass one another again, in another part of the store. That’s anticlimactic.
I think my kidneys benefit from my attempts to process my pain through social media. So, TED Talk, thank you for your input, but you are not correct.
