What I really mean by this question: "Do you have the guts to write a wild, crazy or even stupid post?"
The thing is that we all like to be accepted, appreciated and loved. Therefore, in our online presence, we try to post lovely images, quotes, videos, articles and what so ever we think others (our readers and followers) might like.
We try to appear smart and knowledgeable, and above all, we try to picture ourselves as a good person - well raised, well educated, with manners, kind and trustworthy. But, are we?!? Or at least, are we always like that???
If we want to be honest, I think we all know that we are not entirely like that and even less all the time. We all have our flaws and consciously, semi-consciously or somewhat unconsciously, but we are aware of it. As it's much easier to try to hide them than face them and deal with them, we would instead continue to paint the picture of ourselves, that kind of us that we would, in fact, like to be.
We are doing that in our real life on an everyday basis, but from my point of view, it's much more evident in our online presence. Again, it's just because it's easier to keep the desired mask while being hidden and walled behind our screens.
However, in that sense, we are using all sorts of methods to catch and keep our audience. Some would write long, smart and well-researched posts around some topic or field. Some would pretend that they wrote such articles while they would try to collect certain pieces of somebody else's research and knowledge, and sooner or later or just in between the lines we would discover their hollow knowledge.
There also individuals who would try to intrigue or even shock the audience. Here we may find all sorts of crazy selfies and videos, controversial statements, great advocates for one thing and big opponents for the other one. The list goes on.
Some people would try to entertain their audience with funny stories, photos, videos and similar. But, are they and their lives really that funny and entertaining?
I assume we all know a great and well-known actor Robin Williams whose professional work I personally admire a lot, especially when it comes to the humorous parts of many roles he played with exceptional talent of bringing us the funny side even of the biggest and hardest human's life dramas.
for Robin Williams - Happy Feet Premiere, used under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license.
Unfortunately, his life ended with suicide caused by depression. While he was alive, the depression he was fighting with was not some widely known fact about him, but more just a rumor here and there. I would be free to guess it wasn't something he would like to show off but rather something he would want to keep for himself and himself only.
In other words, while his acting work together with the picture he painted about himself to us (his audience) gave us a lot of joy and laughter, he was suffering a great deal.
That's why I'm asking myself would his life ended differently if within himself he managed to gather the courage to tear apart that beautiful picture movie companies, media and even he painted for us, and speak more freely and openly about himself. Very likely, something like that, in some bigger or smaller portion surely would hurt his career and wouldn't be welcomed by film investors, but maybe it might keep him still alive.
You might be asking yourself what does it have to do with my initial, title question: "Do you have the guts to write a wild, crazy or even stupid post?"
Well, while trying to achieve some success and please our audience by keep doing what is allegedly expected from us (or we just think it is) and by keep painting that amazing but false picture of ours, at the same time we are, in fact, suppress a great deal of ourselves and who we really are! And that, in the long run, might hurt us a lot!
I mean, we can live in that fantasy that we created around ourselves for some while, but sooner or later we have to turn off that computer, that screen or however else walk away from it and meet with our true selves in our real life.
So, the real question is...
While heading to success that way, are we ready to lose maybe just a portion but perhaps even entire ourselves, and is it worth the price???
Or to put it the other way around...
Do we have the balls to show "naked" in front of the world?
And when I say "naked," I'm certainly not talking about taking your clothes off and showing any kind of nudity. (Just saying! Just in case!) π
Posted on Saturday, September 22, 2018
