How We’re Loving Ourselves in All the Wrong Ways
Selfie Nation
It has assuredly swept the nation.
The craze and the hobby that is the selfie.
That quintessential self-portrait that declares I’ve been there and done that. We are a nation perfecting the art of image crafting; on our vacations, in our family life, in our bathroom mirrors.
This is our craft. To show others something about me via this photo. I’m stylish. Well traveled. Beautiful. Fun. Hilarious. Adventurous. Rugged.
It’s as if each of us is our own brand and we are developing the image and marketing the product we want to dispense to the world around us. We want our ratings to be high and our image to be relevant.
As I’ve traveled throughout this past year, I have had an increased awareness of this country’s obsession with the selfie. From the Brooklyn Bridge to the beach, I have taken note of the phenomenon.
It’s estimated that approximately 4,000 people walk across the Brooklyn Bridge a day.[1] The day my husband and I walked over, I swear there were just as many people stopping to take selfies as there were walking. It was striking.
And, so, we lean forward and we purse our lips. We “suck in,” we contort, we bend our elbow to make our arm look slimmer.
In so many ways, we are putting so much thought, so much energy into cultivating our image. We so badly want to love our image. We so badly want others to love our image too.
Zebra Romper
A few weeks ago, my two-year-old niece became my teacher…again. That’s right, a full-blown toddler: Velcro shoes, zebra romper, wild curly hair. The whole bit. This time we were on a beach vacation. We were fresh from the dead of a Minnesota winter and so ready to walk on the beach.
Shortly after my sister, brother-in-law, niece, and I began walking down the beach, my niece’s “toddleriness” came to a head.
We were walking and she was standing. And staring. She was enthralled by the waves; staring at them as the tide came in and then laughing with delight as they almost touched her neon pink, Velcro shoes.
I went back to collect her. Surely, I could convince her to just keep walking. I approached her and bent down to meet her gaze and explain that we just had to keep walking. It was time to move on.
She didn’t move. Rather, now she was thrilled with a seagull, floating just a few feet away. I decided I would appease her by making a comment about the seagull and then get her to move on with the walk winter had us desperate for.
“Wow, that’s such a cool seagull.”
I paused and looked a little closer. “Wow, that’s kind of crazy. He can swim and walk and fly. I’ve never thought of that before.”
That was it. She had totally sucked me in. Suddenly, I was enthralled too. I realized it’s actually really amazing that this “simple” seagull could do all three. I had never noticed that before.
I had totally missed it.
A few days before my interaction with my niece, I watched a very different interaction on that same beach. Two teenage boys ran out onto the beach from a parking lot. One boy took pictures as the other one laughed and posed. He suddenly looked so happy and engaged. As soon as the pseudo “photo shoot” was done, the smiles and laughter dissipated and the boys ran back to their cars in the parking lot.
“Oh, it was just for the pictures,” I thought to myself.
Invitation to Wonder
And so we have a choice.
How will we engage with this world around us? How will we engage with ourselves? Do we care about what is real, or are we satisfied with pretending?
Will we pretend that we are having fun for the pictures? Will we work so hard to project a certain image or a certain “brand” to convince others or ourselves that we are a certain way? That we are worth paying attention to, that we are worth loving?
I’m personally beginning to see how refreshing it is to live in the world like my niece does. I like that better.
That day at the beach I don’t think she ever thought about whether or not her zebra romper flattered her body or if her curls were too wild. Instead, she was fully immersed in the present. She was living inside her body, fully inside that moment.
So, what if we could learn to live in the moment, instead of outside of ourselves; always somewhat distracted by how we look or what someone else will think?
Perhaps engaging life in that way, actually takes a bit of trust. Trusting that we are actually loved and that we don’t have to strive for it. We don’t have to project a certain image to be relevant or likeable.
What if we lived like a totally loving God delights over us, is already enthralled with us? That at our core, our very essence, we are deeply loved more than we can imagine.
And, so, we can fully be present to and engage in the beauty of the present moment because we know we are a part of that Beauty. We’re caught up in and a part of the whole miraculous flow already.
So, maybe that’s what loving ourselves looks like, to be present to the beauty in and around us. To accept and live in and bask in the beauty, as you would any gift. In that kind of love, there is no striving.
[1] Kazis, N. “The Efficient Past and the Wasteful Present of the Brooklyn Bridge,” from Street Blog NYC: https://www.nyc.streetsblog.org
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