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well on a recent uh Airline trip I was
leafing through the the magazine in the
seatback pocket and I came across this
article by a woman named Sarah Manic and
um it was called unfiltered how
motherhood interrupted my relationship
with social media and I found the
article really well- written and witty
and engaging and the more I reflected on
it the more I thought it's making a very
important spiritual Point especially
about people U today now what her major
point is this that those in her
generation who have come of age in the
social media era so they've swam in the
sea of you know YouTube and Pinterest
and Facebook and everything else from
the time they were kids that they have a
very interesting relationship to reality
because they were trained not just to
have
experiences but always to be aware of an
audience because they were recording
their experience so that it might be
presented to an audience who would then
you know critique it or react to it or
comment on it and what this did was it
produced an interesting sort of
distantiation from
reality it was the constant awareness of
of an potential audience to whatever
you're experiencing now I want to just
quote something from the article I
thought was good as she sums this up she
says I've come of age as a writer at a
time when it's no longer possible just
to write a writer must also promote her
work and in the process promote herself
as a person of interest I learned the
snarky casually intellectual voice of
feminist and pop culture bloggers the
easy outrage the Clubby camaraderie so
that was the world she came of age in
and where she learned how to write to an
audience and always aware of herself as
a kind of media personality right now
what happened to her what happened to
her was she became a mother she had this
viscerally real experience of becoming a
mother and she said one day she was with
her infant child on the front porch of
her house and it suddenly dawned on her
that she had no interest in snark she
had no interest in an audience that
might want to comment on her experience
she wanted to get utterly into her
experience and let it simply wash over
her it's as though the dense reality of
this baby blew away her her
preoccupation with an audience and with
being a personality here's something
else I want to just read directly from
the article listen before I had a child
I took it for granted that no
intellectual writer type could ever be
taken seriously where she to Cave into
conventional
sentiment as a mother I was Swept Away
by these huge ancient Universal emotions
I'd previously dismissed as
uncomplicated it's very interesting
isn't it it's it's as though her baby
just kind of broke through this carapace
of of
self-regard this sort of knowing snarky
distantiation from reality this always
play to an audience and she found
herself immersed in the reality of the
experience now here's what I find
interesting so it's it's a cool
commentary on on the generation today
coming of age with social media but it
also points to a very ancient spiritual
distinction between what is classically
called
humility and
pride now to get at this I want to
propose two scenarios because I think
what we what the spiritual tradition
means by pride and humility is actually
very different than our conventional
sense of the two of them here's scenario
number one so you're in a
conversation with a person maybe it's a
prospective employer maybe it's a
popular person that you want to impress
but you're in the conversation but
you're very aware of the effect you're
having of how successfully you're
reaching your audience you're aware of
yourself having the experience so what I
mean here is you know as you tell a joke
uh you're very attentive did did she get
the joke is she reacting the way I
wanted her to
react am I laughing at her because she's
like really funny or because I want to
impress her you're you're following the
conversation as a kind of interested
spectator your main preoccupation being
your own
ego now we all know that kind of
experience and they are wincingly
painful those experiences right now the
reason is you are distantiated from
reality it's as though you're looking at
reality through a thick distorting paint
of
glass it's as though you're a spectator
to your own ego and the reactions to
your own
ego that classically is called Pride see
don't think automatically of you know
the self-elevation of the ego that can
be an effect of Pride or one of the
faces of Pride but in itself it's a
weird distantiation from reality see
it's going through life with the monkey
of your own ego always on your back now
contrast that experience to this one now
you're in a conversation with a friend
and you're at the least bit interested
interested in impressing him in um uh
performing You're simply lost in the in
the rhythm of the conversation you're
following it wherever it leads you're
laughing at a comment when it's really
funny not because you're trying to
impress him you tell a joke because it's
a good thing to tell a joke not because
you're trying to be impressive to your
audience in that kind of experience time
tends to fly by something rich and
wonderful it's not wincingly painful
just the contrary it's like one of the
best experiences of
life that's what the classical spiritual
tradition means by humility again don't
think right away of you know objection
and who am I I mean that might be a a
technique to cultivate humility right
but as Thomas quaint said humilitas
Veritas humility is truth see what I'm
driving it you've taken away the thick
distorting pain of glass and you are in
touch with reality the monkey of the ego
is off your back you're not seeing the
world through the entrance of the ego
You're simply in it you're in it and
that's what gives you Joy that's why
time flies that's why it's light and and
wonderful and Rich humilitas Veritas the
word humilitas of course is from the
Latin word humos which means the Earth
or the ground it's very important it
means you're in touch with gritty
reality now go back to the article that
I referenced I think it's a beautiful
example of how the social media world
and mind you I'm using it right now so I
I appreciate the social media they're
not in themselves bad but how they can
produce in people who are immersed in
them all the time this weird we
distantiation from reality this
preoccupation with the ego and its needs
you know what's wonderful in her
experience the author of the article is
it was the arrival of her baby this this
densely
real thing that happened to her that
allowed her to break through the
distorting glass of egotism and audience
awareness and and ego preoccupation and
allowed her to
experience humus the ground the
Earth that's an enduring spiritual
lesson for everybody
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