Anonimity

I'm becoming more and more like Dad every day.

I'm not gonna lie. I'm here tonight because A: I don't have anything else to do, and B: I have a lot of thoughts that need to be let out. So this post may be a bunch of random thoughts vomited onto the web; we'll see.

First things first, I have to give a shout out to my amazing sister Whitney for returning home from her mission. She did not have an easy mission, and that is what has impressed me the most. In a nutshell, she had to go home about 3 months into her mission for medical reasons. As she was home, her health deteriorated and word of "MS" and "ALS'' began to be mentioned in conversation. Not just scary stuff, but things that most missionaries would say, "Well, I showed a willingness to serve. I guess it's time to move forward." Now, I'm in no way saying that's a bad thing; I think that's a very positive outlook and a mature way to handle it. The thing that really surprised and impressed me beyond words is that in the face of all that, Whitney decided to keep fighting and figuring out a way to get back out. Some switch in her head flipped and she just fought and fought until she finally got the green light to return 4 months later. She went on to serve a very honorable, complete mission, and blessed countless lives in the process. Congratulations Boo-Boo, and Welcome Home :)

So, we continue to move forward in life. The house is filled up again with people, and the Earth keeps on spinning. I'm still busy as ever with work. I was pretty upset to see my first paycheck and find over $100 pulled out in taxes. Thanks, Government. Not like I needed that money for anything. So I had to do a little rebudgeting based on what my new projected income will be, and it's putting a little bit of a dent in my pocketbook; but I suppose in the end things will work out okay.

Okay, so here's more or less the reason why I've been hankering to write this post. It's actually been on my mind for a couple of days, but I just haven't gotten around to posting it because shut up. I've had this really weird and "not like me" quirk since I got home that I just plain do not want to see people. Once I'm actually with the people it's great and I'm super happy to see them! But if I'm making a trip to the grocery store or the mall or crossing BYU Campus, I just dread the thought of running into someone I know. Ever since I got back, I've kinda kept an unnaturally low profile. Anyone that knew me 2 years ago knows that I'm a rather eccentric person who is very opinionated, a little (or a lot depending on who you ask) loud, and slightly in love with the spotlight. Now, I am seem to be making a subconscious effort to stay out of the very limelight I used to thrive on. Why, you may ask? The answer I am stuck with giving people, and worse, giving to myself, is that I have no idea.

Is this a reason to panic? I doubt it. It's summer, and I don't really have a lot of limelights to jump into, so it may just be me trying to sneak back into society unnoticed. Maybe it's that I don't want to be put on the RM pedestal. Maybe it's because I'm honestly becoming anti-social. Who knows; I certainly don't. All I know is that I often just want to be a nobody in the crowd.

One thing that I have noticed is that there's few people in the same boat as me. With Social Media gaining more and more followers every day, we live in a world where we practically live everyone else's lives with them, without ever really living a life of our own. As my dad mentioned just the other day, there are some things that should just be kept to oneself and not shared for the world to see (having difficulty passing a kidney stone is one of them). Fewer things are special or personal because we're all so eager to broadcast every moment of our waking lives to the world. Because there's so many different social media sites out there, and so many statuses and pictures posted just among your own friends (let alone the people you follow), it's easy to become obsessed and even addicted to getting on. It's like checking the fridge on a boring day. No matter how many times you open it, new food isn't going to pop up out of nowhere. Just like a life isn't going to pop up in your news feed on Facebook no matter how many times you check and recheck it.

Even with the race to have the most exciting (or maybe just busy) social media page, we still put on a mask and hide from the world. It's like we're living of the world but not in it. It's so easy to spew out any insult over the internet because you have as long as you need to compose your "perfect" comeback, and you don't need a heart or feelings because you don't have to see the broken person on the other side of the screen. The worst part of it is that any time anyone tries to be as social in real life as most people are on the internet, we look at them as either A) A Pervert/Stalker/Creep, B) A Weirdo/Freak, or C) Old and Out of Touch. So for some reason we want to get up in each other's digital faces and yet when anyone even approaches our real face, we feel violated and weirded out!! You can have a room full of people and all you'll hear, if you listen closely, might be the sound of thumbs thudding against a touch screen. Just the other night, the whole family (my family) was all in the same room but no one was saying a word to one another. Everyone was living in their own little world, and we all just sort of coexisted in the same room. It's scary because every single one of us is guilty of it.

All of this has just kind of made me want to not show my whole life off to the world. So that may be in part why I've been keeping a low profile. Again, I'm not sure, but that's my personal theory. Tonight, for example, I just decided I was done with my phone. I put it down and just left it there. If I missed calls or texts, I don't care; I'm not using my phone for the rest of the day. Don't mistranslate this as me announcing that I'm deleting Facebook, Instagram, and this Blog to be Amish. I still love how much of a miracle all of this is. Through these mediums we can keep in contact with people that it would be impossible to keep in contact with otherwise. I was able to Skype my family as a missionary, and I can keep in touch with old friends that have moved away. I think the biggest thing, as we are so frequently counseled to do, is to keep a balance on all of these things. We've all heard how we need to bridle our passions; I believe that certainly involves curbing our digital appetite as well. 

That world we're all so eager to share can seem pretty empty outside when we're all cooped up in our little corners of the world. So use your phones and use Facebook, Twitter, Google+ (okay, you don't have to use Google+), but just remember that in the end, the thing in your hand is a bunch of plastic and metal that shouldn't run your life. Mankind has made it this far because we've learned to harness and control the elements and objects around us to create whatever we have wanted or needed. That ingenuity has made man fly, live in inhospitable places, predict the weather (sometimes), and instantly find answers to our questions. We haven't come this far and made this much progress to fall prey to our own devices. We created the smart phone, but it was never designed to outsmart us. So take some time to put the phone down and go do something non-technology related for a change. Show the phone, and yourself, that you're in control.  

“I fear the day technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”

― Albert Einstein

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