Hello my name is Ted and my biggest belief lies in a little saying my mom imprinted in my mind, “Love the ones you’re with” she always said. I didn’t acknowledge the power of this saying until sophomore year when I traveled to spain to visit my sister who was studying abroad. The most common saying of the trip was not “Love the ones you’re with” it was more commonly, “tienes wifi?” or “do you have wifi?”
The first couple days of my trip were a huge rush, a rush to get back to the hotel, where I was safe and had my internet connection. A rush to look at all the snapchat stories of my friends in Beverly to see what they were up to. I had rushed back to post the things I had done to social media so that all my friends could see, but it was in that rushing that I had not truly experienced all that this amazing place had to offer. It wasn’t until my dad said to me, “Ted, how bout we just live in the now for this trip” that I realized. Instead of wanting to show everyone from my small hometown that I was having a great time, why not actually have a great time, and enjoy the great people surrounding me and take in the experiences and beautiful landscapes.
Social media really does pull teens away from the real world and focuses them on how they appear on the internet. I was one of those kids, always trying to post content and keep people up to date with my experiences instead of me simply being in Spain enjoying myself.
Disconnecting from my social media driven life and eliminating the Fear of Missing Out, or fomo as my mom calls it, completely changed my trip. What am I really missing out on, My friends and I sitting on a couch watching television? I realized I was living my life out wanting to be somewhere else. This was exactly what my dad was talking about when he said “Let’s live in the now”. Why would I want to be home in my boring town when I just flew across the Atlantic Ocean to visit my sister in Spain.
As my father and I drove across the country side struggling to communicate with the locals, we started to truly have a blast. Why was I even thinking about the highschool parties and thanksgiving at home? What would I remember more in life, traveling for a week with my father and sister, or watching football on my couch? Both my parents have traveled the world and they assured me that my hometown wasn’t going anywhere, or even changing for that matter, for a long long time. By the end of the trip I wasn’t even taking my phone with me, just a camera. Nothing to post, no posts to keep up to date with, peace.
The best part of my trip to was the lessons I took from it, aside from the memories and great places we went, I grew up a lot in that eleven days. Being a mature person that didn’t always have to show people what I was doing was amazing. This day in age it seems nobody is doing things for themselves, but others and social media is an outlet that lets people. It is not social media’s fault, but ours. If you want to prove something, prove it to yourself first and the rest will follow.
This I believe…
That people should do things because they want to and can. And disconnecting ourselves from the social media driven world let's enjoy the things we love because we love them, not to gain the approval of others. #Steemit #Introduceyourself
