In the midst of wedding season, baby showers, job promotions and summer getaways, the reams of good news from family and friends doesn’t always feel like good news, but a gnawing feeling in the stomach.
In a recent post, blogger Chinae Alexander describes this feeling of knowing someone deserves that good news, but not being able to feel affected by it. She looks at some of the barriers to entering shared celebration in the good news of others. She notes how we can get caught up in how the event makes us feel, which can be a major distraction, or how our online personas can keep others from celebrating with us:
I want to submit that the way we project our lives to others has really messed us up here, people. We’ve all collectively decided that we should curate our existence through tilt-shifted megapixels, smartly-worded status updates, exclusive check-ins, and witty 140 character chunks of a perfect life. A life worth envying. A life worth aspiring to […] but when we cherry-pick what we reveal to others, how can we expect them to real celebrate triumphs with us, when we are too busy falsifying a constant flow of epic-ness?
Alexander suggests four ways to overcome the blah feeling of not being affected by the good news of others. Her suggestions have a lot to do with being compassionate with ourselves and others around us, and being present in the day to day with small things like verbally expressing one thing we’re grateful for out loud.
To read the post, click here.
