So, I suck at Lent.

The Twitter bird who looks innocently like it belongs in a baby nursery, ensconced in a sky-blue background, the one I had allowed to grip me with talons until I couldn’t see the loneliness of life. The status bar of Facebook consuming my every spare moment, and all the tough parenting I wanted to escape.

The goal was to release these things that had begun to choke out my capacity for what played right in front of me.

Oh, but then someone stole the blanket that someone else used the week before and had apparently claimed for all eternity. And someone small is getting her own opinions so that the slightest injustice warrants every octave of screams while she rolls around her chocolate brown bedding. Still someone is stressed by taking over a new business and needs, needs my support to pick up the slack at home.

Save me, columns of recipes with various cheese, and witty comments of friends. Fill, you blogs about love that I will repost so I and my list of contacts will know I mean well. Just do not require me to actually change my life. Let me read about good mothers while I have everyone in timeout. Draw me out of my reality while they draw blood.

I count my “likes,” check who notices my updates, write another so that attention will tell me my value.

And forever, I come up empty.

Frankly, what is up with social media? Why do we love it? Why do we always, always keep checking? What makes us obsessed to the point we are dropping a line about how we found lint in our belly button (Ew.), or saw a man with three heads (I hope not.)?  We want to be funny, we want to be clever, smart. But more than anything we want to be known. I understand that some of you hang in the shadows, never posting and constantly browsing. We know you’re out there with your tentative “likes,” and your quiet online wanderings. We feel your presence and deep down, I think you also want connection.

I started to research this question. As it turns out there is a physiological response to telling the world about our constipated poodle. (Again, ew.)

“Through a series of experiments, the researchers at Harvard University learned through a study that the act of disclosing information about oneself activates the same part of the brain that is associated with the sensation of pleasure, the same pleasure that we get from eating food, getting money, or even having sex.” -Lance Brown, WTWH

Well. That helps explain a few things.

And like food, money, or sex, social media can become unhealthy when not moderated or used in context. Lovely. (Me, over here. My scrolling is out of control.) 

I started to scramble to the computer with fervor, ready to wipe out all my accounts when I countered my own thought. What if I approached social media differently? What if some lonely soul out there needs to know they aren’t isolated in their belly lint predicaments? Or what if, as I posted this week, we did more I see you instead of I need you to see me? What if social media is our opportunity for good and not just a place to gain self-esteem. As if that ever works anyway.

“MRI studies have revealed that when we perform an act of kindness, the brain’s reward center is aroused and we experience feelings of pleasure.” -curiosity.discovery.com

 Huh.

And hear me, there is nothing wrong with posting ridiculousness. I happen to have deep, and reverent appreciation for goof. I’m just thinking about my own heart. My own sense of loneliness, how my worth plays into this, what I can do to offer versus what I can do to feel better. I think we all have a personal journey to question when it comes to what we write, post, or comment. So much I have regretted, so much I have learned.

How much more good I could do if I choose.
Kids, timeout is over. Let’s go play outside.