Nearly 300 million people a month use Instagram. It allows users to share the highlights of their day instantly with the people ‘following’ them. After its creation in 2010 it was sold to Facebook for $1 billion and is wildly popular among my generation.
There are times I feel myself and our society wrapped into living an ‘Instagram Life’.
I do live a rewarding life, there is no denying it. I get to serve and work with some amazing people all over the world, see incredible places and share the gospel around the globe.
This past week I returned from a 30 day trip to Eastern Europe. If you were following my journey you might have seen the World Race squad I serve with, some of the cities I visited and some of the people we were able to witness to and encourage. My time out there was filled with many incredible moments, but also some challenging ones.
You see…I could only give snapshot or peak into what my trip was like.
For every smiling group photo there was a hard late night conversation to help someone process.
For every picture of a beautiful castle or riverside there was a night of sleep on a couch or small closet sized, sweaty room in order to stay in budget.
For every testimony or gospel opportunity there were midnight emails, expense reports to fill out and moments I wanted to sit and cry because I was tired of limping around on a hurt ankle.
Yet…I struggle with how to share the whole story. The depth or reality of what a trip and life is. Perhaps it isn’t truly possible to share it all, but does that mean we accept the confused narrative that the snapshot we see is all there is?
We spend the majority of our time comparing our lives to the top 10% we see of those around us. Our struggles, pains and reality compared with the highlights of others crammed through a fancy filter. When we do this we’re simply not being fair to ourselves and each other.
I think there are two tangible ways we can make changes:
1) Stop allowing ourselves to compare our lives to the lives we see around us on social media. “Comparison is the thief of joy.”
2) Allow others to see past our ‘Instagram filter’ we have put up as a shield.
By no means am I advocating we suddenly start airing our deepest secrets with anyone who has a social media account…but we are too quick to keep funneling our life through our filters, even to loved ones close to us!
When I come home from a trip I am usually greeting by a warm embrace and the classic ‘How was it? The pictures looked great!’ In that moment I have to try and decipher if they want a simple smile and ‘great’ response…or if they want to hear about the hard conversation of sending someone home from the field, the sickness that steals your fun off days, the 40 hour travel day to get me there, seeing my squad share the gospel in a small Romanian village and everything in between. After seeing all the filtered pictures are they just seeking a filtered response?
I am hoping to continue this adjustment in my life.
I don’t want to fall prey to comparing my life to the highlights I see of others.
I don’t want to stop at the ‘Instagram view’ of the loved ones around me. There is always more to hear beyond the filtered smiles and vacation photos.
We as a community are better than this.
Are you and the people around you living the Instagram Life?
