Pretty as a Picture

I got a digital camera ahead of the curve. I was 12 years old and paid for it all myself with cash that I saved up from my allowance and the odd babysitting job. In the tech department of Sam’s Club, I picked out the highest quality point-and-shoot available at that time: a 5 mega-pixel box of silver plastic with 3x optical zoom and a tiny screen in the back. You couldn’t sell it for $25 now. But once upon a time, it was a magnificent piece of technology.

Eleven years later, it has never been easier for the average person to take professional-looking pictures. Even the tiny cameras on cell phones take photos of surprising clarity and color---with a plethora of filter options so they can appear appropriately aged or bright or grainy or dim. Partly because of this and partly because of networks like Facebook and Instagram, it has also never been easier to share them.

I don’t necessarily have anything against this ever-expanding phenomenon, this trend of increasingly beautiful pictures shared with an increasingly large audience, but I’d be lying if I said it couldn’t use a little critical reflection. Photography can be a dangerous artform because, though it is arguably the most realistic of the visual arts, it has the ability to present as truth something which is far from it. Its very realism deceives us.

I have a friend who uploads new photo albums to Facebook on a very regular basis. He is extremely well-traveled and also possesses a professional-grade camera. This combination of facts means that nearly all his pictures look like they’re straight out of a travel-adventure magazine or possibly an advertisement for happiness. “Me in front of the Taj Mahal.” “Me and my girlfriend in Manchu Pichu.” “Me feeding a baby zebra.” “Me eating sushi in Tokyo.” They’re beautiful and exotic.

And I can’t stand looking at them.

I’m not sure if this friend is intentionally trying to make us land-locked people jealous, but if so, he is succeeding. Comments under the album usually read something like, “You’re in New Zealand right now? Are you kidding me??? SO JEALOUS!” or “stop being so cool. seriously.” Written in jest...but not really.

Which makes me sure I’m not the only one with a Facebook friend (or friends) towards whom I feel this complicated combination of fascination and revulsion, awe and envy. I want to be him and yet...oh, how I despise him.

Nearly 15 months have passed since my college graduation, enough time, it seems, for most people to get their feet back under them if they were caught off guard by the sudden rush of unregulated, unprescribed real life. Cue the comparison game. We’re all feeling a little self-conscious these days, let’s be honest. Who is working at the coolest company?, we evaluate implicitly. Who is living in the most exciting city? Who is married or engaged or dating? Whose life looks the most romantic, the most adventurous, the most successful?

It is at this point that the art of photography fails us. It is at this point that the cool 1970s filter, the photobooth crop tool, and especially the delete button, assist us in manipulating, or being manipulated by, a world that is not real.

On Facebook, or any other social networking site, you can present to others any side of yourself that you desire. You can tailor your uploads, comments, posts, and settings to reflect whatever it is you decide is the best “you.” And, of course, you’re not the only one doing this---all your friends are too. But that side of the equation is easier to forget.

We know that photographs present us with a flat image, a mere split-second in time, but we often take them at face-value anyway.

Nothing illustrates this better than the wedding albums which have been popping up on Facebook left and right this summer. I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for looking at them---even if I don’t know the girl. Artistic photography for the big day is much more important now than it ever was ten years ago, and many brides are willing to shell out big bucks for a professional photographer with an impressive portfolio. I don’t blame them---I doubt anyone regrets having high-quality pictures of such a special occasion. But the experience of clicking through a wedding album online has very little direct correlation to the experience of the actual wedding. This isn’t just the obvious difference between activity and passivity. It’s the difference between reality and idealized reality, fluid imperfection and frozen perfection. Because I think we can all agree that no picture is going to make it into the wedding album that doesn’t support a memory of flawless bliss and harmony.

Artistically focused close-ups of the flower arrangements. The bride’s sundrenched dress as it hangs expectantly in front of a window. Candid laughing grandmothers and dancing groomsmen. The “let’s have the whole bridal party jump in the air” kind of shot is no longer the limit and height of creativity. But despite the beauty of these pictures, we can’t deceive ourselves into thinking they represent something 100% real. People are rarely as happy as they look in pictures---which cannot capture things like headaches, self-consciousness, weariness, or the ill-fitting strapless bra which may really be at the forefront of your mind. No wedding is ever perfect, just like no marriage is, despite how it may appear in frozen retrospect.

I’m not advocating that we attempt to document things like frantic mothers-of the-bride, missing bow ties, uncomfortable jokes, family tension, or any of the other million things that can go wrong at weddings. But the disparity between the actual day and the albums that emerge from them serve as a good reminder that what we see in a photograph may not actually be what we get. The beauty of the bride in her pictures is no indication of how likely her marriage is to last.

Like a painter with a blank canvas, you can make your photos say almost anything you want. Remove from the frame the garbage in the street, the vendors selling cheap keychains made in China, the ragged beggars, the smell of sewer, and you can make your trip to Europe look as picturesque as a post card. Pull out your camera as your bus drives through a slum in Mexico and you might capture something truly heart-wrenching to share on your page; meanwhile your own heart remains decidedly unmoved. These things, the motives and feelings behind the photos, are something Facebook can’t show us.

We all have friends who manipulate the medium in this way, and we all, to a certain extent, are guilty of it ourselves. We post pictures of fancy lattes to advertise our high class. We strategically post, delete, tag, and untag until only the best of ourselves remain. We upload fat albums from all our adventures, pretending that its only for the purpose of “photo-sharing” with those who joined us. Or sometimes not even pretending. Because, whether we admit it or not, we want other people---even those we don’t know well---to click through our pictures, comment, “like,” and maybe even be a little jealous of all the fun we’re having. We like to feel validated in this way.

It’s definitely not something that is limited to the post-grad years, but sensitivity to such habits is perhaps increased during this time of branching out and settling down. Some find they have not landed quite where they hoped to be, and thus those pictures of their happy friend in San Francisco (who somehow manages to look so gorgeous in every picture, damn her) have a sinister, siren-like appeal. How do I measure up? we ask ourselves. What do people think when they look at my Facebook (or LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever)?

It comes down to a matter of self-consciousness vs. self-confidence. Are you secure enough to not post that picture of yourself that’s really cute? Are you satisfied enough with your own life to see past the veil of other people’s "perfect" realities?

Sometimes I find that I just have to say no to the mindless knowledge accumulation.

No, LinkedIn, I do not want to hear about Janie Jone’s new job.

No, friend from high school whom I barely know, I don’t need to see the pictures of your new loft apartment.

Nothing feeds discontentment like comparison, and nothing prompts comparison like an online diet drenched in other people's photographic lives. 

Show Me an Adult with the Courage to Fear Differently

Today, for probably the 7th time this year, I listened to a Wheaton College chapel message which I first heard in late February of 2012, just as I was beginning to feel the black shadow of college graduation creep up on me. Of the hundreds of chapel messages I sat through in my four years at Wheaton, this is the single one that remains clearly cemented in my mind, filed at the top of the academic shuffle. I’ve provided the link here, for those of you whose curiosity is piqued enough to watch it. I highly recommend it. Hopefully the speaker, art professor Leah Samuelson, would not mind my shameless endorsement were she ever to discover it (which, frankly, isn’t likely).

You might recall that I quoted part of this message in a previous blog post, back in September of last year (although, on second thought, you might not, given that it was only my second post ever). It is this same section of Leah's talk that caught my attention on the 7th (or whatever it is) listen, as it did on the first.

"How many gifts from God will justify trust and thanks?" asks Leah, speaking of her struggle to find a role model of faithful living in the year after her college graduation. "Are the pressures of life stronger than the call to be wise? Show me an adult with the courage to fear differently."

When I first heard this message, sitting in my pale blue seat in Edman Chapel, I thought I misheard her. I thought she must have said "the courage to live differently." This seemed to make more sense; it is certainly a more commonly used phrase. But after watching the video recording, I realized this is not what Leah said. She used the word "fear," and she used it intentionally.

So many of life's actions are driven not by what we love but by what we fear. We fear rejection, failure, money shortage, loneliness, shame, dependence, low status, the inability to get what we want when we want it. We worry about rent, bills, our appearance, our careers or career plans, doing things to boost our resumes or our cool factor on facebook. Getting ahead. And so our lives become oriented around meeting these needs. In some ways this is perfectly natural; such worries are not inherently bad, after all.

But what if our fears were different? What if we were driven not by these---the fears of the world---but by a different kind of concern? What if we feared selfishness, shallow relationships, greed, complacency, and apathetic living more than we feared not being able to buy a new car or get into a good grad program? What if our lives were oriented so that most of our emotional energy focused not on living well on the surface, but on living well in the deepest parts of our beings? What if we refused to buy into the concerns of our culture and instead lived with a different kind of concern?

I've been thinking a lot recently about what that would really look like. I worry a lot about my future, how I'm going to keep my bank account from running dry, what kind of career I should pursue to make my life feel valuable. These aren't bad things to think about or to want, but as Leah said, I don't want them to become the source of my life's intention. All too often, focusing on these concerns is really the easy path, the route of escape rather than transformation. A bandaide solution to happiness. Transformation is hard, and for those who really don't want it, it is avoidable.

Many twenty-somethings live---even if they claim to deny it---as if there is a magic formula for a meaningful and successful life. Steps include, among other things, a well-paying job, a grad degree, a significant other (leading to marriage), exotic travel, stylish clothes, a cool apartment, a fun group of friends, and some sort of "nonprofit" passion (because who doesn't want to save the world in their free time these days?). And so these are the things we---and I'm not leaving myself out of this---tend to pursue.

Pursuing other things, things like patience, selflessness, community, passion, and servanthood---though we claim to desire them---often fall to the bottom of our to-do lists. They don't feel very urgent. We worry about them after we think about our money or work or status problems. Practically speaking, they are not the source of our lives' intention. And, a lot of the time, they are more difficult to achieve anyway. But maybe we should be afraid; we should worry that we lack them.

I'm not totally sure how to change the orientation of my life so that my primary pursuit is not financial and social stability and security. But I think it begins with a big step back and two open hands. I think it means moving towards God, cultivating relationships, asking big questions, practicing good stewardship, and learning how to be content. It means consciously and daily challenging the assumptions of many of my peers (and myself) that career and success are everything.

When Leah graduated from college, she looked for an adult with the courage to fear differently and ultimately decided that she had to become that adult herself. I think that's what we all need to do.