Splash No. 212 - Being Real
Being Real
I downloaded an app called BeReal a few months ago. Every day at a random time, you take a picture of what you’re doing and it takes a selfie at the same time. If you don’t take a picture, the app doesn’t let you see what other folks have posted, nor does it let you see their posts from any other day. The idea is that you have to “be real” and simply capture what’s in front of you, eliminating the ability to curate your images to paint a picture of a perfect life.
When I first downloaded the app, I deleted it without ever posting, convinced that I’d have to show the world the immense boringness of my life in front of three different screens, the individual corners of my apartment, and the surrounding streets that I frequented. A few weeks ago, I re-downloaded the app when I saw my coworkers using it, just to see. I expected to start posting and find myself appalled at the gushing ennui flowing from my images. I was ready to fall to my knees in overwhelming embarrassment that forced me to spike my phone into the closest body of water. Yet, such a feeling never came.
Instead, I was endeared by what I could find to share with an extremely random collection of people that made up my friends list — several coworkers, some high school friends, some college friends, a former boss. When the daily notification appeared, I realized that I had the opportunity to share some of the most mundane moments that brought me a lot of joy: my color changing lights, my favorite TV shows, the tree outside of my balcony, the tree in the park, the cuteness of my neighborhood, etc., etc., etc.
I doubt most of the friends I have on the app care at all about my photos or what I share, and that doesn’t really matter. For the last few months, I’ve continuously been mentioning how much self-acceptance has done for me and this feels like another way for me to accept myself. Even if my life has become very simple and may externally seem very boring, I’ve come to enjoy it dearly and don’t think I need to explain that to anyone.
I’m sure many of us share a certain vision of a successful person — the highly consistent and industrious worker, waking up early, doing a 6AM workout, showing up to work to be productive continuously, socializing afterwards before coming home to a perfectly clean apartment. For a while, I thought I needed to be this person to live a life worth something. And yet, here I am, languidly sauntering through my life. I move at my own pace, keep to myself most of the time, and find it all fairly meaningful. I still strive to do and be more, but I don’t want to let the striving erase the enjoyment of what I have now, the way that I always used to when nothing I did felt like enough.
I think about how the writer Ryan Holiday won a Grammy long ago and decided to get it inscribed with a message of his choosing: “When you die, this will go in the trash alongside all your other ‘accomplishments.’”
Drops of the Week
PLAYLIST - stank bass - collab playlist with a buddy that I contributed two songs to
ARTICLE - "Blunt-Force Ethnic Credibility" by Som-Mai Nguyen - intense piece that makes me think a lot about Asian-American art
POEM - "What It's Like" by Jane Kenyon - Everything familiar was fading fast...
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Really,
Nikhil