lie no. 26 | part i | 09.07.19

I woke up a couple hours before my flight landed in Hong Kong, a quarter of the entire trip nearly behind me already. Air travel has a mysterious way of devaluing time, each cloud stripping the minutes of their meaning till there’s little left. The plane’s nose needling in and out of the cloth of clouds, threading together continents and time zones like it’s nothing.

I don’t tend to dream on flights—there’s no need—so it was off-putting that day to awake from such a vivid one.

I was in my kitchen when the alarm went off, alerting me of someone outside my home, peeping through my windows, looking at my life. It’s possible I know them. It’s also possible I don’t. I can’t tell, but I’m not afraid for some reason. I keep the windows clean and everything in view staged within an inch of its life. But wait! These windows work one way, like the ones in interrogation rooms—I can’t see this person, only they can see me. I don’t get to know how long they linger out there, on the outside looking in. I don’t get to know which windows they’re looking into—which they’re opening for a closer look, which they’re overlooking entirely. I consider keeping the shades drawn, forcing visitors to knock, but then I’d have to answer each one, or at least peek to see who’s there, knowing they know I know they’re out there.

Oh, dear. Instagram had officially infiltrated my subconscious, Inception-style. At least I had a hunch as to why.

I’d started questioning social media and the role it plays in [the destruction of] our lives after humiliating myself within its city limits earlier in the year. I refused to believe a technology platform was solely to blame. I imagined humans had a little something to do with it. Simply put, I didn’t want to quit Instagram after what happened—it seemed cowardly to flee the scene. Crime scenes are rarely to blame for the crimes committed there anyway. 

Instead, I started dissecting social media with the sharp scalpel of reality, a trick my therapist taught me before Instagram even existed. He’d once asked me which I most closely equated to an email: a letter in the mail, a phone call or a knock on the door.

Uh, a knock on the door, doc. Obviously. And the house is glass so I have no choice but to answer it right away. I can’t pretend I’m not home or didn’t hear it. I have to react immediately.

He proposed some sort of alternate universe where inboxes are treated similarly to mailboxes. You wouldn’t stand by the mailbox around the clock, constantly opening it and immediately replying to each piece of new mail, he pointed out.

I loved the question—even if it took me years to understand its point. The best questions always reveal more than they let on.

When I started translating social media’s idiosyncrasies and rituals into offline behaviors, I realized it’s even weirder than that other universe with its mailbox-like treatment of inboxes. That, and I might have some unfounded fear of intruders.

Take, for instance, finding a close childhood friend you lost touch with decades ago on Instagram. I’d stop whatever I was doing and say hello at the very least if this happened offline. Then I’d probably call my mother and say, “you won’t believe who I just ran into!” But none of that happens online. A follow, maybe a scroll, and it’s... over.

We’re always connected, rarely connecting. We’re constantly communicating, rarely conversing. Has the relentless pursuit to be seen (and liked) that is social media actually made us forget what it’s like to feel seen (and liked) offline? I craved connection, conversation and feeling seen—at least after I remembered they existed. When did Instagram, a virtual vending machine of human desires always on (in) hand, become so satiating? What it’s contents lack in nutritional value it more than makes up for in convenience—enough so we fail to remember we’re surrounded by all-natural versions of our very cravings. Too busy to even notice.

I didn’t set out to ruin or save social media as much as I sought to better understand how it affects me. Desperate to understand how I’d let myself lose all ability to differentiate between platonic and romantic interactions, I wanted to understand where it went wrong, where I went wrong. It suddenly wasn’t all that hard to understand anymore how I’d gotten so confused and why I felt so lost afterward.

As the plane’s wheels skidded across the runway and made its way along the tarmac to the gate, I fired up my phone. I’d like to say the first thing I did is text my family to let them know I’d arrived safely, but honestly, I went straight to Instagram. I don’t know when the mindless scroll started serving as the modern equivalent of stretching my arms after waking or my legs after a long flight.

My thumb stopped on a post, my eyes directing my brain to tell it to do so. It was an ad—for what, I do not know, and never could find again later—with the following quote attributed to Viktor Frankl, a psychologist I’d never heard of:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

It was one of those quotes I had to read multiple times to process. Something about it struck me, so I wrote it down. I thought about the difference between responding and reacting. I’d been more of a reactor—often a nuclear one—than a responder, as long as I could remember. I thought about my earlier dream and the proverbial knocks fueling my constant state of anxiety. Maybe I had it all wrong. I’d been so busy always reacting and overreacting I’d forgotten I had the power to choose my responses. Plus, the prospect of finding freedom anywhere intrigued me.

I’d posted an Instagram story early into my trip but got frustrated with myself for stressing that the shoddy WiFi meant it posted out of order so I powered down for the rest of the trip. I scanned the app’s inbox after landing, dozens of messages from people excited about my trip—a friendly reminder no one cared if the inflight meal was served before or after my face-mask application.

That’s when I saw it. Or, rather, that’s when I saw him. To this day I’m still not sure which is the more accurate description. Either way, there he was, the ghost of my bad behavior—or bad thoughts or whatever it was—from all those months earlier. What the hell was he doing here?