Does Everyone Need To Know Everything?

I remember going to a political rally with my mother back in my ancestral hometown. She pointed out a man in the crowd as “El Gato.” Mr. El Gato was a thin man with gray hair and green eyes. Mom told me the story of how she went to a Christmas party with El Gato back in the seventies, only for El Gato to step outside for a smoke. She was all alone in the party, and a man approached her to chat. That man ended up being my father. The two of them met then and there, and they started dating a few weeks later. A couple of years after that, I arrived.

Mom lost track of El Gato for a while. She left town to go to university, and she married my dad. The only way to hear anything about anyone was through gossip, real social networks made up of people in the flesh, and conversations over coffee. When she saw him again at the rally, she went over to say hello. He barely remembered her.

Last year, when my brother died, I received a text message from one of my exes. (Let’s just call her an “ex” for the sake of argument. The relationship was far more complicated than that.) She shared her condolences and also shared that she was going through a divorce. They got married the year I met my wife. In fact, on the second date I had with my wife, the ex called me to ask if I could come over and help her with something for the wedding. (The wedding was the next day.) I didn’t go over because, well, I was on a hot date… My wife and I have wondered what all that was about, but we’re not mind readers.

Electronic social networking being what it is, I got to see from afar how the ex posted all sorts of sad messages on Facebook about the trials and tribulations she was going through. In one of the last message exchanges, she told me how her spouse would sign the divorce papers on their wedding anniversary. She said it was a way for him to punish her, though she didn’t say why she was being punished. Then, all of a sudden, the posts started becoming more positive. Finally, a few weeks ago, the posts started to include the spouse again, with mentions of how happy they were together.

Talk about confusing, right?

That is only one of the many stories I pick up on as I go through social media. I’ve been wondering lately if I need to. Do I need to load my brain with concerns about the complicated lives of others? There’s the turbulent life of the turbulent artist, bouncing from one relationship to another, from one town to another. There’s the seemingly happy life of the world traveler, always posting fantastic photographs from places far and away. Or the couple who seems to be in the perfect relationship, with the perfect kids, and the perfect jobs. Do I need to know all of that?

Do you need to know about me? Do you need me to share in the blog about how my brother died? What kind of trauma did I share with you, and did I do any moral injury to you in telling you that story? Do I raise feelings of envy when I post of my successes?

I was sixteen years old when I graduated high school. I graduated early because my high school used the credits system, and I had earned enough credits through extracurriculars and night school classes to graduate a year early. Way back when I entered kindergarten, the school wanted to hold me over one year because my birthday was in the middle of the academic year. Mom wouldn’t have any of it. I could read and was getting better at writing. When she proved to them that I was ready academically, they let me in. That put me on track to graduate high school at seventeen. A few extra courses in the summer and some English courses in the evenings put me on track for graduating at sixteen.

Several of my relatives attended the graduation ceremony. Among them was one of my cousins, someone born a few weeks after I was, and someone with whom I had shared many adventures. I jokingly told him that I had “beat him” to graduation, and my mother admonished me for saying that. She told me he was the kind of person to hold a grudge over such a thing, and she was right. The grudge became more apparent over the next years I spent in El Paso in college. It got to the point that he almost had me arrested at a Mexican military checkpoint… But that’s a story for a later time.

I finally had to block him and his siblings on social media because anything I posted — success or failure — was met with immediate and intense criticism. If I posted about a success, I was “exaggerating,” according to them. If I posted about a failure, it was my fault and/or God’s punishment. It didn’t matter what I posted. The criticism was fierce. There was even a rant about my posts being written with good grammar and punctuation in Spanish and English. “Why do you try to be so perfect?” one of them asked. “You’re not happy,” one of them wrote on a post about meeting the woman who is now my wife.

So the answer was clear: They did not need to know about my life, because they were clearly affected to the point where they violated their Christian principles to criticize and demean me. Other friends and relatives have asked me to stay connected via Facebook or Instagram, because they want to know how things are going, and they’re enjoying seeing my kid grow up. Others say they feel inspired by my accomplishments, or by the obstacles I overcame. They tell their kids about me, about how a Mexican kid from a very poor place in the world arrived to this spot.

I’ve been more aware of the value added (or taken) from my life by social media. I’m not finding any value in being outraged or feeling envy/guilt/anger at the actions of others. I am not finding any value in worrying about others when there is nothing I can do to help them. So I find myself unfollowing or even blocking some people, and being more judicious in what I share… Though I still fall for the trap of oversharing.

My wife and I have talked about the many friends and acquaintances who have aired out their relationship issues on social media. We have agreed that the internet is forever, and we would hate for our child to look back on those issues and see her parents being mean or downright evil with each other. We would also hate for our child to be teased or bullied over any issues we share online. (I’ve seen too many horror stories about “influencer parents” who made their kids’ lives a living nightmare by sharing too much.)

So you’re still here, reading. That’s good, I guess? You have some curiosity about all the things I have going on in the big, bad world. I promise not to burden you too much with my problems, and share happier stories of success… Unless you like drama, in which case I’ll sprinkle that throughout. But, at the end of the day, you don’t need to know everything about me.

Do you?