ADVENTURES IN A TIN CAN: Our highlight reels on Facebook (and what happened behind the scenes)
Ah, Facebook. We pick and choose what to show to the world. Our lives seem so much more vibrant online. The trip my Main Squeeze and I took this summer is no exception. I posted pictures of our travels in the Tin Can on Facebook and the pictures look amazing. Why wouldn't they? They were of amazing places! Did we really see all those beautiful things? Of course we did! But those pictures don't show the whole ... picture.
*Click on each picture to see it larger, with a caption
My Main Squeeze and I traveled through six countries in Europe on our 8-week summer break. We got to see some gorgeous cities, drove through pastoral scenery, rode our bicycles through quaint harbor towns. But do you know how we got from one amazing place to another? We drove the Tin Can. For hours. At a maximum of 80 kilometers an hour. Through beautiful scenery that looked exactly the same for 200 kilometers.
While my Main Squeeze drove - he did all the driving; the Tin Can is a manual, which I can't drive - I either looked at the scenery, or I chatted with my Main Squeeze, or I read a book, or I took a nap.
What we don't show on Facebook are all those ordinary moments that make up the bulk of our lives, in between the extraordinary ones. There is nothing interesting in a photograph of me sitting in the passenger seat of the Tin Can. There is no reason to post an update that my Main Squeeze and I are going to nap. There were days where it rained for hours. Perhaps my Main Squeeze and I were sitting in a café just so we could get an hour of Internet. And we had to wait there until it stopped raining. Or perhaps we got caught in the Tin Can when it started raining, so we sat around in all of our 102 square feet of space, lying on the bed, listening to the rain and talking or eating or napping. Most of the time, the Tin Can did not have electricity and certainly no internet, so we couldn't update social media or even watch TV. I have one picture of my Main Squeeze sprawled out on the bed, looking out the window, with an empty cup nearby, but I didn't post it on Facebook. Any one of us can sprawl on a bed, look out the window, and drink a Coke. We want to show the world the extraordinary things we do, not the every day, normal things.
One of the times we were at a cafe checking social media, I clicked through some of my friends' pictures, friends who were also away on summer break: some in Australia, some in Finland, some in South Africa. I felt a twinge of envy seeing their photos - while I was on an 8-week road trip through Europe. What is wrong with this? How could I feel envy at other people's travels while I was traveling myself? Because at the moment I was looking at their pictures, I was doing something ordinary: I was checking Facebook in a cafe. And they were in some exotic location (i.e. somewhere I was not). If I had been riding my bicycle to a lighthouse in a coastal town of Holland, I wouldn't have felt that way because I would have been doing something extraordinary. Not to mention that I wouldn't be online (because I was on a bicycle).
So many of us use Facebook as a place to share our lives. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but of course what we see on social media is never the whole picture. Nor does it have to be. But those of us who look into other people's lives will often compare what we see with what we're living. Basically, we compare their highlight reels with our behind-the-scenes and we always feel like we're lacking.
That day when I was scrolling through my friends' Facebook pictures of their summer trips, I took a moment to remember where I was and what I was doing. I was on an 8-week road trip through Europe in our Tin Can with my Main Squeeze. I was exactly where I wanted to be, doing exactly what I wanted to do, with the man I love. Even if at that precise moment, we weren't doing anything more glamorous than drinking a coffee and checking Facebook.
