Why I am no longer on Facebook

Clicking the front gate shut, I turn around to face the morning. It’s such a pretty street that I live in, especially in our balmy tropical winter. Our street is lined with large trees all the way down; I don’t know what the trees are, but in our warm winter their green leaves fall to the ground & are replaced by thousands of delicate mauve flowers. The morning is a little crisp, but the sun has risen over the horizon & already it is kissing my skin with warmth, a promise of a glorious day.

There is not a cloud in the sky, & as I walk I enjoy the symphony of the morning – the bass notes a low hum of traffic from the main road one block over, accompanied by the shrill soprano of many songbirds who flit about in the purple-pink hues of the large trees.  As I reach the end of my street, I turn left toward the large shopping centre. The smell of morning dew now has a top note of doughnuts & hot coffee, & the hum of traffic gets a little louder.

There is a sprinkler on at the units on Alfred Street, just next to the footpath. Two little sparrows flit in and out of the spray. One is chasing the other, the bird in front glancing flirtatiously over her shoulder before darting into the well-manicured hedge partitioning the units off from prying eyes. Her mate follows, & they are both suddenly gone.

The music from the traffic now features percussion in the form of hissing brakes from a bus, picking up commuters on the way to work in the city. They stream onto the bus, a flurry of bright tops, neckties & slacks, take away coffee cups, & a rainbow of faces representative of the cultural melting pot that our town is increasingly becoming. I reach the traffic lights & wait, watching the traffic stream past me like colourful wet smudges across an oil painting. On the corner opposite waiting to cross in the same direction as me are two colleagues from another area of my building; I don’t know them well, but after 8 years we recognise each other & we smile & wave. Next to me is a young mother with a pram, a little baby with a pink blanket pulled up to her chin & an oversized flower atop her head on a stretchy headband. In my head I challenge my own judgement of the mother, who is smoking – I have no right to judge her. Stop it! Show some grace.

The warmth from the sun is brushing my right shoulder, & the sky seems bluer than before. I hear chatting & giggling behind me, & turn to see a group of children running up from the local school, now also waiting for the lights to change. They are from a local African family – or maybe two families – and their little brown faces & bright white teeth beam back at me as I give them a smile.

It’s Monday, & far from feeling the dreaded “Mondayitis” I am grateful of my close proximity to work, my beautiful, quiet street which is 2 streets away from the biggest shopping centre in town, the interesting cultural diversity of my neighbourhood, & the beautiful weather of the city I choose to call “home”.

A few weeks ago, this walk to work would have been very different. You see, I have disconnected from Facebook, & all social media.

A few weeks ago, I would have walked out my gate, pulled my phone from my bag & walked to work, head bent at the neck, staring at the screen in front of me as though in worship of my iPhone, absorbing my news feed. I would have been oblivious to the birds, to the trees, to the smells & sights around me, enslaved by the device in the palm of my hand, scrolling obsessively through my newsfeed to ensure I get my fill of information before I start work. My mind would have been absorbed in other people’s problems, whinges, polluted by the usual onslaught of Monday Morning Blues memes & whining, information about what others were eating for breakfast or what other people’s children had done before being taken to school. The myriad of emotions – jealousy at the statuses of my SAHM friends posting about their daily plans, thoughts of meal planning from the recipes that pop up from foodie pages, yearning for clothes & boots that I can neither afford nor that are practical for our climate, vicarious triumph at the information from a picture a friend had “liked” showing someone who had overcome some sort of personal adversity to achieve something while I achieve nothing but RSI in my thumb from scrolling, horror at news articles informing me of some tragedy on the other side of the world that, while grim, shouldn’t impact my day or my life.

Because that’s what this is: My Life. And by burying my head in my phone, by reading about everyone else’s lives & engaging in everyone else’s story from the world over, I have disengaged from my own story. My emotions should be tied to MY experiences, not someone else’s. I should be outraged when something outrageous happens to ME – not when an injustice occurs to someone else living somewhere I’m never likely to go. I should be triumphant when I overcome something in MY life, not when someone else overcomes an adversity I will never know & that will never be mine. I should be horrified when tragedy touches ME, & I shouldn’t have to feel it every day when it touches people I don’t know. And I have the right to feel good – not guilty - on a Monday, on my way to work, while my kids go to school & daycare & I assume my responsibility as a working & financially contributing parent & citizen.

So now, I choose to live in the present moment of my own life, to live my own story, & to embrace my moments – the boring ones, the fun ones, the beautiful ones, the difficult ones, the triumphant ones – but MINE. Not yours. Not theirs. Not his. Not hers. Mine.