It happens a lot with me in this last month of the year. December being Christmastime and also with more than just a few weddings having been scheduled then, I often see photos on Facebook of people I know, or knew, back then, sometimes a lifetime ago and often just a day or a week ago.
From those I first knew a long time ago, I marvel at how they have or haven’t changed so much since those days when or before we were closer. Sometimes I am surprised, especially when I see them where I have not ever seen them before, like a work colleague at home, wearing a robe and slippers or on a carefree vacation, at a famous spot across the world, sometimes where I also have been. And it causes the dialogue of my internal chat to pause and say, “Huh, I never thought they have traveled there, or that he had a robe like that or a pool in their backyard.”
Bob Newell
I also see photos of others — those strangers who are in some same social world as they are or once were — standing and smiling, sometimes artificially so, next to their children or their parents or their aunts or uncles, their cousins or siblings or grandparents or friends. I see my friends from a day or a decade before posing beside people I often do not know. Occasionally, I see my friend sitting with one of my other friends, whom I also know, but I was heretofore unaware these two of my friends were friends with each other.
And, in the magic and liberty/mystery of what we have come to accept as normal social media, in some cases for the first time, I view these acquaintances as more normal and, occasionally, as more human. When I view my friend or associate standing beside a parent, child or other relative whom I know to have died, for example, it humanizes that person, moves me emotionally closer to them, and I suspect seeing and posting that old snapshot sends up powerful senses of grief for him or her, from the loss of that one when they were back there, back then. For one, brief moment, my typically self-obsessed, normally self-centered soul takes a short journey into the land of empathy and, for the first time ever or in a while, I care with my friend.
I am certain that seeing the photos posted by a friend on Facebook also sends up more negative emotions within me, like when a friend has visited a spot on the map that is still on my bucket list and I feel envy or when a posting surfaces some bad history between me and someone in the picture. Maybe it’s a picture of a party to which I once was invited but am no longer on the invitation list. I certainly need to inventory that history and determine if and when I can move toward those who were among them who were there back then.
For now, I am just beginning my reflections on this phenomenon. Much still lies ahead if Facebook postings can, in any way, help us to grow. But at least I have begun. And you?
Bob Newell has served as a university professor and administrator, a local church pastor and a cross-cultural missionary. He and his wife, Janice, now live in Georgetown, Texas, and he serves churches as transition coach and intentional interim pastor. They were the founders and remain advocates of PORTA, the Albania House in Athens, Greece.