“Living My Best Life”

When I post a photo on social media, or send it along through email, I will often get the response:

“Keep living your best life.”

I find it incredibly confusing. 

Along with the photos, if anyone was paying attention to the text of anything I was sharing, I was talking about my search for a will to live, my confusion, my struggle, fighting the demons of my illness and trying to figure a way forward. 

This is my “Best Life”?

Where I am not sure if I am looking at the beauty of the natural world as my Swan Song or desperately hoping it heals me and I feel completely untethered to anyplace, anyone or anything?  Sometimes, I don’t know if this even counts as “living.”

The Photograph Deceives….. or is it this all about you?

Let’s talk about the photograph, because as a society, our relationship with photographs has changed over the years and mine has always been a little strange indeed. 

Back in the day, I know it wasn’t just me, but we ALL hated sitting at someone’s house and looking at their vacation album.  It was boring beyond belief.  But now we love Instagram and Facebook, and the same snapshot of the beach, even though it’s from 30 different countries, it’s always the same snapshot, we like it and heart it, — we always post it ourselves when we are at the beach, and if we are at home, we longingly look at the photo with jealousy.

What changed? The forum, the medium? Better photos? The sending and receiving in real time?    

Delving into my own personal history for photographs, here goes:

I am the youngest of three children of immigrant parents who came to the U.S. in early 70s, born in 81. In the 70s, my parents took pics of my two elder siblings around the U.S., albums I’m guessing they shared with family at home during visits, but by 1981, that camera was either lost or buried, or mom was just straight up tired and the novelty had worn off.   
At one point, while searching, I found exactly 5 baby photos of me.   So 5 photos from the time I was born, probably until I was 5 years old. Not sure I could locate all 5 of those pics now. 

As a young child, mom and dad took vacation photos of the family and it never phased me.  I honestly can’t remember being forced to pose that often and the best part about looking at them now is the insane 80s outfits and hairdos we had. 

But my teenage years, I was a pill.  I thought photos were beyond stupid.  I thought I was hideous and refused to pose or smile for any photography.  My siblings would get beyond frustrated with me, me in angsty black lipstick and black nail polish with that mug shot look on my face ruining their photos.  My sister put one of those photos in a tiny frame in her bedroom and it makes us chuckle. 

The college years.  Still haven’t advanced to digital cameras, it’s those Kodak disposable ones.  For my first study abroad and backpacking trip, I was technically still a teenager.  Still hated posing.  Didn’t understand why anyone needed to take a photo of a renown tourist attraction when a better image was available on google.  But I’d make silly faces, and let my travel buddy take the photos and I’d ask for a double roll to be developed at CVS pharmacy.  But when a fire burned my apartment down and my set of photos were damaged, I said c’est la vie and forgot about asking for negatives to re-develop the roll.  I went on a safari in East Africa without a camera, but a friend sent me copy of some shots I treasure now. I did end up making a photo album before I graduated college, just head shots if you will, of all my friends, my version of a yearbook. Not to memorialize a moment or place, just the friendship.

When my best friend from college passed in a tragic car accident, I only had 2-3 photos of him. None of us together.  I do regret that. 

I don’t think I bought a digital camera until 2008, even though they first started gaining popularity in 2003.  I traveled a lot in those intermittent years and literally have practically no photos from that time.  An album I made when I lived with a community abroad for six months, but none of just places I went and things I saw.  Just the headshot like photos again.  Other people had digital cameras, so I think people would occasionally send me them, but I had no organized place, digitally speaking, to store and keep them. 

Then Facebook.  That was the game changer.  People could TAG me in a photo, and I’d have it, without ever having to take the photo myself!  Hurrah!  Almost all my twenty-something friends had dabbled with photography as a hobby at some point in their life, but I honestly took the worlds worst photos EVER.   Now I was off the hook.  I started to like photos, the photos that capture a moment and place and not the headshots, but I didn’t know how to take them.

But the problem is the tagged photos are just of me!  When I went another fabulous backpacking adventure for a month in 2008, I once again made my travel buddy take all the photos and just downloaded my copy and posted them as my own.  I did this again in 2010 on a trek.  That’s what friends are for!  When I moved abroad and wanted to share with my friends at home a slice of my life I bought a camera and then lost it after a month or so.  But my group of friends were like paparazzies, and there was never any shortage of photos online to document the fun we had. 

But all these photos, were just a way for me to look back and remember.  My friends would post and we would sit around laughing about the fun of the night.  In my mind, no one from the outside was paying any attention to these photos to understand what I was up to or how I was.  It was still as boring as looking at someone’s vacation album.  I standby this feeling looking back.    

But NOW the smartphone.   2012 (for me). This to me was the real game-changer.   This device, is always with you, takes the photo, and sends it out to the world in REAL time.   And now, for some reason, everyone is paying attention.  

It wasn’t an easy adjustment for me.  I still had this deeply held philosophy that taking a photo, and capturing a moment was preventing you from experiencing the moment.  So, when I took a 10-day trip to central America in 2014, I left my smart phone at home, no camera, no nothing. Again, someone I met sent me a couple of photos which I later posted that I doubted anyone looked at. 

Eventually I joined the masses and started posting pics, but haphazardly.  I still preferred it when someone else took the photo and just sent me a copy or tagged me.  I came to understand the power of the photography, it’s story-telling power.  I liked that about, it could show not tell, and people paid attention even when they did not listen.   

But the photograph is also highly misleading.  

If I look through the photos I took and posted from 2018, the year I felt not one single moment of joy, not even a second, it tells a very different story.       

And the years, I actually felt I was living my best life, well those are largely unrecorded.  

If you are feeling trapped by the routine-ness of your life and craving a vacation, and see a beautiful pic of a green mountain and blue sky I post, you wonder to yourself, am I living my best life? Greenery would make my life better.  Working less, and more time for travel and play, I wish I had that. 

You are in fact not reacting or paying any attention to me, when you say “Keep living your best life.”

Just say, pretty picture instead.