As I was driving my teenage sons and a friend to a concert, they were telling one another about how they needed to get some great pics to Snapchat, post on Facebook, etc. I realized that their perspective was coming completely from what they could show their friends and what their friends were going to think about them. I think they were more excited to “show off” that they were going to this concert than actually seeing the concert! Even at the concert half the kids were videoing the whole thing and watching the concert through their phone. Even a singer yelled, “Put your fucking phones away and live in the fucking moment.” No one did. You could almost hear the wheels spinning as if they were all drones trying to compute what he just said, but the program wouldn’t allow them to respond. I was really blown away by this. It was sort of depressing.
At first, I thought this was a generational thing, only applying to the young or the technology obsessed. I soon had a realization that I could relate to this distorted behavior. I USED TO BE LIKE THIS in a very similar way. I thought back to a long-distance relationship I had. Due to our complex relationship (that’s another story), we were very competitive in a way. Everything I did, or thought about doing, I did from the perspective of, “What will he think?” I thought that if I did something really cool, he was going to be proud of me, or jealous of me, or want to be with me even more. I wish I had realized this at the time. It was an enormous burden; trying to one up the other all the time. I was never totally my true self. I was what I thought he wanted me to be. That maybe, if I was sooo wonderful in his eyes, he would whisk me away from the horrible situation I had created. That was a battle lost before it even begun. After that relationship ended, I was so grateful to just be me. An honest me that could look through my own lens, without someone else’s filter.
It is mind-blowing to be truly present; to not think about what someone else is going to think about what you are doing or seeing. Which brings me to another related topic: It is very important to me that as I write my stories here, for anyone to see, that I don’t look through everyone’s filters. I have acknowledge to myself beforehand, that I can not take any thing personally. That is a very hard thing for me to do. I want to be liked. I do many things that I don’t want to do because I want to be thought of in a good way; however, I now know that I can not please everyone and it is not my job to do so.
So I will end here with the young but wise words of some singer whom I can not name, “Live in the [bleepin’] moment.” Make sure it is YOUR moment.
P.S. Can I just add a side note here about this MegaFest concert? Of course I can. I am all for a good F-bomb but after like, 100 it just looses its effectiveness. So guys, can we get a little original after like 50 F-bombs? Or at least go into the whole line-up of curse words, for variety sake. I’m just sayin’.
The Heroine's Adventure 