You Deserve a Digital Footprint

You Deserve a Digital Footprint

Dear Reader,

Why is it so terrifying to be seen? Truly seen? To put yourself out there, for instance, on social media, when that is the world that we live in? I am fully aware that my faceless account is an act of cowardice — of staying in my comfort zone when every self help book ever tells you to leave it. And yet, my whole body screams at me that to be seen is to be killed. I am not scared of death, however, so possibly something worse? To be embarrassed? Yet, I would consider myself immune to embarrassment in most forms. I tend to embrace the awkward, embarrassing moments. I am typically the very first to report on my own mistakes as they are often so comical, how could I keep them to myself? So, then, what is it? Am I afraid of exile? Rejection from the tribe, so to say? I have experienced that before as well. (A story for another time.) And I came out of that happier and more myself than I was before. It seems to me that the problem I have when it comes to putting myself out there, without a mask, is two fold:

1. I am not _______ enough. (Fill in the blank: funny, pretty, fit, skinny, charismatic, creative, etc., etc., etc.)

2. What if the other people (particularly, people that I know - although, even more so, people that I have known) notice and talk about how I am not ________ enough behind my back.

This is interesting to me. Why? Let me tell you. Both are rooted in fear and insecurity. Which is fair, I find myself to be two things, deeply afraid and utterly insecure. How do I overcome these crippling fears? Drugs, perhaps? (A joke, I promise.) But truly, why are these two thoughts playing almighty king in my brain?

I saw something on instagram once where a guy said that whenever he catches himself thinking that someone else might be saying terrible things about him behind his back, he reminds himself that he is the one thinking that. He is thinking the mean thing about the other person in the first place (believing that they would say nasty things behind his back). Not only that, but he is using the other person as a means to bully himself. Since, again, it is his own brain that made up the cruel supposed dialogue in the first place. There is simply no way of knowing exactly what a person thinks unless they tell you. This is why one of the number one reasons that marriages fall apart is due to a lack of communication. A marriage - two people who certainly know each other better than you know the stranger, coworker, classmate, friend of a friend, aunt, uncle, cousin’s cousin, whatever the person may be to whom you are attributing all of these nasty, vile thoughts about yourself. They probably don’t even know enough about you to come to the crude remarks that your brain so readily spits out. That, alone, ought to make you question the source. I understand that the brain is trying to protect itself by scanning all possible worst case scenarios in hopes of avoiding them, but learning to shut down this feature would be an absolute game changer for so many of us. Sometimes listening to your brain is the worst case scenario. What’s worse than wasted potential due to fear?

After all, in the entirety of human existence thus far, we are living in a time when the most amount of people get the opportunity to leave their mark for the generations to come. Historically, so many individuals have been erased. Ginormous chunks of family and world history, gone — just because the world did not have the technology to remember them all (and, of course, due to a fair amount of slavery/sexism/discrimination/inhumanity, which decided who was “worthy” of being remembered). 

Now, we do have the technology. We have the ability to create time capsules every single day. That, my friends, is a privilege. And, it can also be a gift.

How great it would be if during the absolute most gruesome, painful, terrifying, agonizing years of human existence — your 20s — you had a vlog of your grandmother, mother, aunt, etc. going through the same thing. What a gamechanger that would be.

So stop being so afraid. (I say this to you and to myself in equal measure.) You deserve a digital footprint. A very human, very you-reflective, messy, possibly would get you canceled in your great-grandchildren’s generation of social media politics, jumbled up ball of a digital footprint.

Think of it as your very own metaphorical caveman handprint on the wall that is human existence.

Sincerely,

Teigue A. Emerson