Category: Facebook

Eat The Rich

Yesterday morning, I happened upon a story about Mark Zuckerberg. I am not a fan of Zuckerberg on the best of days. I use Facebook only to share my Wordle score with a friend group and to relay my blog posts to my friends who use the site. I go back and forth on whether the platform has any redeeming value, most of the time erring on the side that says we’d probably be happier humans if it had never come into existence. At any rate, the story I saw reported that Mark Zuckerberg had a 7-foot-tall statue of his wife created. It linked to the Instagram post where Mark revealed his exorbitant gesture of love.

It’s difficult to encapsulate the ways this post bothered me, but I am going to try. First, there’s the casual fashion in which Zuckerberg attempts to make commissioning a statue of his wife into some relatable gesture by posting it to Instagram. Because, of course, the average Insta user is going to see the post and think, “Wow. What a thoughtful, loving husband.” (Insert vigorous eye roll here.) Second, Zuckerberg has zero concept that invoking a tradition associated with the elite Roman class might be ill advised at a time when many feel our own democracy is falling like Rome itself fell. And how tone deaf is it to brag cavalierly about a statue you’ve had created in honor of your wife at a time when people are struggling to afford gas, groceries, and housing? Not certain we needed the cogent reminder of wealth disparity in our country. I think the majority of us are well aware of it, thank you very much.

As an upper middle class, white woman in suburbia, I have my fair share of privilege. For our anniversary this year, my husband sent me a floral arrangement with 29 long-stemmed red roses, and I posted about it on Instagram because, while he regularly brings me flowers, he has rarely sent them to me. He did it this year only because we were apart on our anniversary for only the second time in nearly three decades. I do know the funds it took to purchase the roses could have provided a week’s worth of groceries to a small family. I get it. I’m no monument to justice, and I can understand how someone might feel the same way about those roses that I felt when I saw that statue. But if 29 long-stemmed roses could provide a week’s worth of groceries for a struggling family, how many families could the money used for that statue of Priscilla provide? Some will argue he earned his wealth and should be able to do with it as he sees fit. And, honestly, I don’t begrudge him the luxury of being able to fund such a grand gesture as much as I find it unhinged to assume posting about it on social media would make him look like a good guy. What could he have been thinking? With so many barely scraping by right now, it felt a little, well, “Let them eat cake”-ish.

Though the whole display left a sour taste in my mouth, I’m empathetic enough to understand Mark has perhaps lost some grasp on reality with the attainment of his prodigious wealth. There are roughly 800 billionaires in the United States, and approximately 85% of them are white men. Imagine the mental disconnect that must accompany being one of 800 people who collectively hold nearly 4% of US wealth while the bottom half of Americans, approximately 167 million, hold only 2.5% of the nation’s wealth. Possessing the financial resources to buy 1,400 acres of ancestral land on Kauai for the purpose of establishing a family compound complete multiple houses, treehouses, and a 5,000 square foot underground bunker might make one more than a bit removed from reality. This is the American dream, though, isn’t it? The notion that hard work can lead to a life of ease and luxury? This is precisely what capitalism promotes.

I have to wonder, though, at what point the other 332,999,200 of us will decide we’ve had enough of this shit. Are we even capable of becoming appalled rather than fascinated by this nation’s billionaires? Where do we draw the line with wealth and decide too few possess too much? Or is it simply part of the destiny of a free, capitalist society to escort us to where we are? Will the gross display of billionaire excess ever tip us towards a revolution away from capitalism? Will we prove the musings of Jean Jacques Rousseau correct, that “when the people run out of adequate sustenance, they will eat the rich”? If we do get to that point, I’m gonna guess the native Hawaiians might be the first to climb the six foot wall around Zuckerberg’s compound and approach him with a fork.

(Editor’s note: I am, in no way, promoting cannibalism. I just found Rousseau’s statement to be food for thought.)

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And Then Life Happens

What will you leave behind?
What will you leave behind?

It has been a lachrymose few days for me. And while I’m rarely teary-eyed for long, sometimes my thinking brain gets trampled unexpectedly by my feeling heart and leaves me a bit off kilter. Life’s challenges can explode like forgotten landmines lying in wait, and recently I’ve been privy to more bad news than good. The shock of the unexpected and the gravity of life’s free fall moments got the best of me last week. I’ve been clawing my way from my heart back to my head for days hoping to gain some traction in the present.

Late last week, I learned via Facebook that a former high school classmate of mine died. It’s not easy when anyone dies. It’s more difficult when the person who passed is your age because, well….Hello, Mortality. Beyond that, I hate learning about death through social media. It’s such an unwelcome, impersonal shock filled with unanswerable questions. I can’t say that I knew this person well. He was among the best students in our class, so I was on the outskirts of his life in AP Physics and Calculus. He was someone I knew from the hallways, the yearbook pages, and the sharing of mutual friends. As the news of his passing spread across my Facebook friends’ news feeds and the online memorial tributes to him increased in number, I grieved along with my friends through some sort of osmotic process. The few interactions that John and I shared happened in the more recent past. I knew more about him through Facebook than I knew of him in the real world, so I suppose it was fitting that I learned about his moving on through the same channel. I can’t say that I had an impact on his life in any way, but I know that his life touched mine in the kind of way that makes you realize that we citizens of Earth have more in common than we think we do based on what we see on the outside.

Today as I was driving home after dropping the boys off at school, still absorbed by life’s absurdities and ill-timed departures, I was following a snow-covered van. We traveled along at 55 miles per hour and the snow from the van’s roof blew off in swirls. As the individual flakes whizzed toward my car, it appeared I was making the leap to hyperspace. In the early morning sunlight, each flake was a tiny fleck of gold or silver. I got caught up in the beauty of this pure and simple occurrence. It made me deeply and honestly happy. I felt better than I have in days. It wasn’t a winning lottery ticket that brought me out of my funk. It was a moment of gratitude for life brought about by a random act of beauty I was finally present enough to appreciate.

I can’t stop thinking now about how wrong we humans are about our journey on this planet. We make life into what appears on the outside. We obsess with how we look rather than focusing on who we are personally and what truly matters to us. We stress about where our kids go to school more than we worry about our relationships with them. We want the respect of others, and we think we will earn it with important job titles, tastefully decorated homes, and luxury cars. We are cats jumping at shiny things. We are clueless.

The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is. Everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart, and all that will be left of you is what was in your heart. ~Jim Carrey

This quote has been bouncing around in my head for weeks. I’ve been wanting to say something about it, and several times I’ve sat down with my laptop to try to coax the words out of my mind. They wouldn’t come. Then our class lost John and it came into focus. All the epitaphs, composed for a friend who left us too soon, collected the whole of John’s heart and put it on display for all of us who regret that we did not know him better. Short though his life was, it was a life lived right.

We who are still here are lucky enough to have this moment. Don’t squander it. Look around you. Be grateful for what you have. Pay attention to those who matter. Don’t bother chasing the shiny distractions. Time is precious. Someday someone will be painting a verbal picture of you posthumously. Make sure you show them your best side now.

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Grow A Vagina And Get Back To Me

The link I wanted my girlfriends to see…the one that led me to yoga

Today I did something I don’t often do. I posted to my Facebook page a link to something that is a politically charged issue. I usually avoid any sort of post that might in any way be construed as inflammatory. I usually do this because I’m not a big fan of conflict, and I don’t necessarily like to splatter my political, religious, or other personal views all over Facebook for the universe to see. Today, though, I got a wild hair and thought some of my girlfriends would appreciate a link to a web page that interested me. The page offered a petition called The Bill of Reproductive Rights. Created by the Center for Reproductive Rights, the bill’s mission is to let lawmakers in Washington, DC, know that women want safe, affordable, and readily accessible reproductive health care. Call me crazy, but as a woman, I care about this issue. Deeply. So, I posted the link intending to share it with my girlfriends who might also care deeply. The can opener turned. Wouldn’t you know it? Worms. Everywhere.

Within fifteen minutes, I had received a post on my link from a friend I knew from college my freshman and sophomore year. The minute I saw his name, I knew his comment would be contentious. You see, this fellow and I are about as far opposite each other on the political spectrum as you can get. Sure enough. He had seen my post and had something to say. I was already regretting my decision. I read his post and took a deep breath. Against my better judgment, I decided to reply to his comment. My comment was short and sweet. I told him that if he didn’t appreciate my right to my own opinion, he was welcome to hide my posts or block me from his Facebook world entirely. I thought that would end the argument. I mean, how could he possibly take it any further, right? Wrong. He took my comment as an invitation, apparently, to enlighten me about how clueless I am. Cheese and Rice. Are you kidding me? His next comment was 158 words long. Yes. I checked. 158 words to elucidate how clearly misguided I am as to what is important with regard to this election…at least for him. Here’s an exact quote:

This whole war on women is a straw man, a distraction that is used to draw attention away from our economy and ALL people’s freedoms being radically eroded.

Well, I can understand why he would see things that way. There are a lot of issues about which to be concerned this election, just as in any election. But for me, this “war on women” will never be just a “straw man” because I have a vagina. It matters a great deal to me what legislators think is okay for me to do with and for my lady parts. Some people want the government to keep their hands out of business. I want them to keep their hands out of my business, my lady business. I did not, contrary to the beliefs of some, post my link to foster a debate. I was simply sharing information. I was not looking for an argument or asking for input. In fact, after I read my friend’s 158-word post, I did what any good feminist, hippie, liberal would do. I took a deep breath and went to yoga to seek the enlightenment my friend was trying to give me.

This election is close. We all have a lot at stake, but that doesn’t mean we have to get in each others’ faces about it. I see political posts by friends every single day that run counter to my own beliefs. But, I don’t hop onto their personal Facebook pages and vomit my opposition all over the place because I respect their right to their opinions and beliefs. I choose to agree to disagree. I’m comfortable with my beliefs and no one, no matter how emphatic their comments are, will change my mind until it’s ready to be changed. End of story. And, yes, friend…I am receptive to honest, intellectual give and take on the subject of women’s reproductive rights. And, the minute you grow a vagina so you have a legitimate stake in this issue, let me know and I’ll take you up on that offer. I’m not unreasonable. I just think you should know a bit about the subject before you discuss it.

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