My “authenticity” has been spin

The pressure has never been greater to act smart, be funny, look good, and waltz through life with a never-ending stream of Facebook moments.

Even our messes, mistakes, and moments of misery get the “social media treatment.” You used to have to have a publicist for that kind of thing. Now everyone can spin. Now burning the morning coffee warrants its own news alert and press conference.

I wonder if social media is making it easier or harder for us to know and be known.

Social media makes it easy to count our “friends” in real-time. It makes it easy to keep up with what Rachelle from Mrs. McGee’s fourth grade class is eating for dinner. It makes it easy to share as much about myself as I care to share via GIF, photo, text, or video.

Do I know more about the lives of more people than I did before social media? Yes.

Do more people know more about my life than they did before social media? Yes.

Does that mean I know my social media friends? Does that mean they know me?

No.

Because social media just gives us more tools to do what we’ve always done: Package and present ourselves to the world as we wish to appear, not as we truly are. Worst of all, seeing our friend counts, likes, and shares increase feeds our illusion of being known.

I speak from experience.

All my life, I’ve tried to keep up appearances. One of my greatest tricks has been fooling everyone–including myself–into believing that I am authentic, honest, open, vulnerable. At my wholesome Christian college, I was the first guy to admit in public that I had a pretty big appetite for sex and that I liked pornography. In hindsight, I see that it was a PR move–a clever trick to differentiate myself from the other guys competing for girls in our social circle. What seemed like authenticity turns out to be the opposite of authenticity (but it took me 20 years to figure that out).

When social media came out, it gave me a thousand chances a day to “be authentic” in the extreme. All for the purpose of making people like me, which is not in any way authentic.

Even writing a blog–like this one–is like trying to drive a car with bad steering. The forward motion pulls me to one side–toward using the medium to manipulate your opinion of me–and I have to keep pulling it back to center. I have to remind myself that I’m writing for the sake of writing, not to impress you or manipulate your opinion of me.

So I recently discovered that my reputation for authenticity, honesty, openness, and vulnerability is nothing more than just…a reputation. One that I carefully constructed over many years. I was so good at crafting this persona that I fell for it myself. I didn’t even know I was doing it.

Take that a step further. If my persona is the one I designed to attract people without actually letting them in, what is the condition of my relationships? Are they real? Are they true? How well does anyone truly know me? How well do I truly know anyone else?

And finally: How well do I know myself? Do I know the “real me” or do I know the me I make myself out to be?

Scary thought: What if I don’t like the real me?

Scarier thought: What if nobody likes the real me?

A thousand friends on Facebook may be no friends at all, but at least it distracts me from a reality I may be afraid to face: That I have people in my life, but I’m not intimate with any of them. None of them truly know me. None of them let me truly know them. We live around each other, but we don’t live with each other.

Please don’t send me an email or text later today asking if I’m depressed or suicidal. I’m not. Please don’t worry. Lonely? Yes. But faith, hope, and love are alive and well.

What’s the point?

The point is that I don’t know how to be known. Even by me.

And if I don’t know how to be known–even by me–I don’t know how to know you. How can I know someone else if I don’t know myself? Who we truly are is as much a product of our relationships as those relationships are a product of who we are. One affects the other.

Let’s start here: I’m afraid.

I’ve been afraid for as long as I can remember. It’s a primal, young, lost little boy fear that is so overwhelming that I can feel it on the bottom of my belly and the top of my skin.

I’m afraid to die. I’m afraid of getting old. I’m afraid of getting hurt. I’m afraid of my family dying, getting old, and getting hurt. I’m afraid of not being enough. I’m afraid of being left alone. I’m afraid of being with people. I’m afraid of being lost. I’m afraid of being afraid.

I’m afraid enough to curl up in a fetal position and cry for someone to rock me like a baby.

And I feel that way almost every hour of every day.

That’s the first time I’ve ever admitted that to anyone–including myself.

Looks like we both just took the first step away from appearances to authenticity.

What about you?

Onward and upward.