“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you.“ Who knew that the words from this Stealers Wheel song would be so poignant 50 years later. This is how I feel right now. A moderate in a polarized world. A yoga teacher that has just enough gray in my hair for my older students to trust me, and just enough gray in my hair for my younger contemporaries to distrust me.
Many of you have asked why I’m off of social media. I don’t need my work to become a commodity. I’m really not looking to be a yoga rockstar. I also don’t want to objectify my students by putting their pictures online to prove that I’m doing “the work.” I have done that in the past and I’m not comfortable with that going forward. A friend of mine recently said that, “Stating your beliefs is not activism. How you show up in the world is what matters.” I couldn’t agree more.
It seems we have lost our authenticity in this tech takeover. Who knows if the person that’s posting for your favorite business or yoga teacher is actually them. That’s performance, not presence. When we perform, there’s an urge to get it right and a rush to judge when someone doesn’t. Social media should have us connected, but we are more disconnected as humans than we’ve ever been.
Our social media platforms have allowed for some of our basic conversational etiquette to be tossed out the window. We used to avoid talking about politics, now it’s all people want to talk about online. Hell it’s a metric. Organized religion is on the decline, maybe politics is the new religion. Social media sure is the new bully pulpit. Conservatives and liberals are using it equally, mostly to no avail, except to get an amen chorus from the echo-chamber choir. Like I said in my last blog, you’re not going to shame people into actionable change. And constantly talking to like-minded people isn’t gonna change anything either.
I find it very interesting that the conversations we won’t have in person are the ones we will have behind the keyboard. Maybe we need to flip that script and show up in person with a clear sense of who we are and an open mind. Who knows, we all might change a little. We might have some empathy. We might see the person behind that viewpoint or vote. But that’s scary isn’t it? That means the soapbox we’re standing on might get kicked out from underneath our feet.
I don’t need to agree with you on everything to recognize your humanity. I might be showing my age, and maybe I’m out of touch, but I have to believe that our interpersonal relationships are the key to our survival. I know that in my yoga classes that’s where the magic happens, but it doesn’t mean much if we can’t bring it out of the classroom and into real life.