Dear You,
How many Tells do you have? I have… actually, say real, I have none, I don’t even have Tellonym.
However, I did have Ask.fm. And while this might be suggestive of my age (still not that old guys!), it is actually more telling of how our desire for other people to be interested in our lives is a timeless affair.
I distinctly remember how I used to anticipate logging onto my Ask.fm profile, all in the hopes of being greeted with a slew of questions from the school friends I followed on the app. I also distinctly remember being disappointed more often than not, since I was almost always greeted by more questions from the bot than from actual accounts. I used to think that this general lack of questions I got clearly meant that people did not care about me. Moreover, it even fed into the broader worries I had about my social standing in relation to the other people I saw around me; from the seemingly cooler, older people I befriended online to the friends I made in school and church. I was afraid that people might have thought of me as lesser and maybe even disliked me because I was boring or lame.
Looking back, it is not difficult for me to see that I was overly fixated on baseless concerns then. Yet, these fears were extremely real to me when I was going through them. Consequently, it is with this hindsight that I hope to share with you three pointers I learnt over time about such social stress:
1. Your worth isn’t defined by numbers
As we continue to use social media as a way to communicate with our friends, it is important to ensure that it doesn’t become yet another source of stress for us. The sheer ease of checking the number of viewers and followers we have, along with the number of Tells, Asks, DMs, likes, retweets and so on, makes it equally as easy to fall into the trap of thinking that “the higher the quantity, the higher my worth.”
While a previous letter entitled, ‘Social Media’, goes into greater detail about how we can then better conduct ourselves online, I want to drive home the idea that a number is not representative of how other people view you. Just think for a second about whether you could really reduce all the funny experiences you and your friends shared for example to a mere digit.
Thinking that our friends are invalidating us by ‘refusing’ to respond to a post is therefore unfair to the both of you, as it is akin to saying that your friendship can be precisely quantified and ignoring how your friends might have been genuinely preoccupied – or simply have missed your post altogether for other practical reasons like the algorithm messing up or from following way too many people. A single number cannot reveal these things.
What the Bible does, however, reveal concerning our worth is clearly written in Psalm 139:1-6, and verses 13 and 14:
“1You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.4 Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.5 You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
For God not only wonderfully created us, but also knows both the good and bad thoughts we harbor even before we do. I’m not sure about you, but when I first came across this passage when I was going through my struggles, I found a lot of comfort in them and I hope you do too.
2. Life is not a popularity contest
Meanwhile on the other end of the spectrum, we also have a conception of the so-called popular people that we seem to have it all. Spanning both the online and physical realm, they appear to have something that people just gravitate towards, such that they have many friends in social settings like school and online.
When we examine these (supposed) individuals we may even subconsciously compare ourselves to them and wonder why we aren’t or can’t be like that. In so doing, we try to identify the features we think they possess that makes them popular and pressure ourselves into believing that we need to change aspects of ourselves to become more ‘like-able’ as they are.
Although it might be tempting to buy into the common, stereotypical narrative that popular people are by extension cooler and hence better, this is not true. At the end of the day, being ‘popular’ doesn’t actually make you any better or worse than someone else. Life is not a competition. Fundamentally, what these insidious comparisons come down to is, in reality, how we choose to define ‘coolness’. This then results in us subsequently questioning what our understanding of ‘better’ truly is as well. If it simply comes down to having more friends, the notion of quantity quality comes into play again. More so, as Christians and as God’s creation, the purpose of our life is instead clearly outlined in Ephesians 2:10, “10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
I say the above with a lot of caution as there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a part of, or aspiring to be in, such a clique. It’s also perfectly fine if you decide to ‘nope’ out of this real quick. What is problematic is if you ever feel compelled to change yourself because if you don’t, you won’t be accepted and fit in into a particular group. You should never let another person influence you like that.
3. Know who your real friends are
Ultimately, if you feel like you cannot be yourself around your current group of friends, warning bells should be going off in your head now. It can range from you being afraid to talk about certain things with them or even hiding your interests and key sides of yourself for fear of them judging you. This also includes whether you feel self-conscious from doing the little things like praying before eating your recess meal in school to big things like them being antagonistic towards you just because you are a Christian.
Even though having a religion may be famously ‘uncool’ to certain people, I personally feel like it is a good litmus test to determine whether your friends will really accept you for who you are: a child of God.
To end off, there is a famous quote by Oscar Wilde which reads, “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” I hope you bear this in mind as you navigate your own social circles – and hold the knowledge, that we are God’s beautiful creation called to fulfil His purpose, even closer to your heart.
With Love: Noah