SOCIAL MEDIA AND OUR INSECURITY

 



“How many likes until you love yourself?”

Alvesha Chauhan

 

I turned 65 on July 24. For a month before that, a group of my well-wishers were passionately coaxing me to start my own YouTube channel. They were strongly convinced, that I could reach out to a larger audience, and make a greater imapct…

But, I wasn’t convinced, at all…

So, their hope, that I would launch my own YouTube channel on my latest birthday was met with my lack of interest in it, and I ended up disappointing my genuine well-wishers…

It was ironical, that when I was seriously contemplating on quitting a large-scale visibility – be it on any social media platform – I was being passionately coaxed by some of my well-wishers to do exactly the opposite. They kept saying: “There is so much you can do… There are so many people out there who you can reach out to… We will help you to expand… etc., etc.”

But, I did not want to ‘expand’ outside… I wanted to expand inside!

It’s nearly fifteen years since I started blogging. And, it’s more than four decades since I started scribbling my ‘notes’ in whatever piece of paper I could lay my hand on… None of these had started with a desire to ‘expand outside’… It started as my internal cleansing-process… a spiritual exercise. I, therefore, never bothered to ask as to who would read my writings, who would like them, who would comment on them and who would subscribe. I think, the lesser I bothered about such questions, the more I could focus on my writings… What started as ‘Notes to myself’, always, remained as ‘Notes to myself’…

Sometimes, when I watch some videos/reels on social media – all sorts of them… entertaining, inspiring, serious, silly or stupid – I wonder: “How many likes, comments and followers can help one to truly love oneself?” I can sense the desperation, the insecurity – the broken self-worth… in many of them. The frantic desire to ‘show up’ with each video/reel is driven by the all-consuming desire to not only stay visible but to expand, expand and more expand…

Yes, as Alvesha Chauhan asks: “How many likes until you love yourself?”






As I see more and more sunsets, I get more and more convinced, that ‘more’ is just an illusion…

Let the ‘more’ be.

Let the attention, therefore, be on loving and valuing self. When self glows, it’s bound to spread its light to people around it. Let’s not ask – “To how many people around?”…





Let’s remember, that the darkest place lies right under the candle’s flame…

 

GERALD D’CUNHA

 

Pic’s.: Pixabay: 1. geralt 2. mac231

Video: GaryVee Video Experience

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