Another friend is going through an earth-shattering financial crisis. And another through divorce. One suspects her husband is cheating. One has problems with her children. (Don’t we all?) But you’d never know it based on the profiles they have.  It begs the question, “why?”. Why do we put up that curtain of happiness, whilst closets full of skeletons are hiding just beyond?

Is it because on Facebook, we have so many “levels” of friends? There are acquaintances, friends,
colleagues, family, even children of your friends. Do we really have 1700 friends? Probably not. But it’s likely you have 767 acquaintances, 2 former employers, 339 people you saw 10 or more years ago in high school, 100 extended relatives, 93 former (and possibly current?) frenemies, 369 friend-of-a-friends, and 20 very good friends.  Yet when we update a status, it’s there for all to see, no matter how long it’s been since you last saw them, and whether they truly would, given the opportunity, sell your status update to the nearest tabloid or alumni association in a heartbeat.  So maybe we only post the positive things that all levels need to know about.

Maybe it’s etiquette.  Do we really need to air our dirty laundry to all of them? Emily Post would maintain that if you wouldn’t share it with your great grandmother, it’s not for public viewing on Facebook.

It could be one, or the other. Or even both. But I think it’s something far deeper. A wise person once told me never share the occasional fights with your husband to someone you don’t equally share as many of the ways he dotes on you. And she was right. It’s because if you only share the bad things, that’s the permanent picture they have of your relationship. And maybe it’s that way with the picture of our lives. 

I’ve kept a journal for a long time – sometimes I write in it, most times I don’t.  The first year I was married to my husband, I wrote in it one night “Had a fight about a potato.” No blows were exchanged, but the verbal gauntlets were thrown, I’m sure – enough that I felt the need to document it.  A week later I could probably tell you what that potato skirmish entailed. A year later, no. But I do remember when I went back a year later and read that we’d had a fight over a potato it made me think. Why would I take time to document a wrong, when I could take more time to document something fun I’d done, or something funny that was said? Who even won the potato fight? Were they mashed when they were supposed to be fried? Too small? Too big? Red instead of yellow? Skin on or… you get the idea.  

I think the reason so many people don’t post about what’s really going on in their lives is because they don’t want to remember the potatoes either.  To focus on the good things – the joys, the milestones, the happinesses, and let today’s potatoes be forgotten.  Those happy Facebook posts are what we look at when we lock ourselves in the bathroom for five minutes of sanity, or when our heart is broken over a hurtful comment, or when we feel left out  and lonely. We look at memories, at milestones, at a moment in time that we wish was frozen. Because they make us smile enough to unlock the door and come back out.  So the next time you see a friend’s happy-family picture or status and you know the opposite to be true, encourage them, pray for them, and then unlock your own door and come on out.