Photo de Jacek Dylag sur Unsplash
Guess what Mum? she said as she got in the car. When I was there I ate chicken feet!
What?! My stomach turned over at the thought. What did they taste like? I asked weirdly fascinated.
Kind of soft and chewy because they cook it a long time. The meat was a bit fatty and you had to pick out the tiny bones. It wasn’t too bad actually.
[Dear reader: Before you judge me for my close-minded gustative prejudices, just know that I’ve grown up in Pakistan, seen and tasted a lot of varied cuisine and had to cut up tripe with my bare hands for our dog to eat which has traumatised me and I could very easily be vegetarian.]
As we rolled in the driveway and she got out to open the gate and slipped in the offhand remark:
I bet that’ll be the first thing you tell everyone when we get inside!
I’m sorry what? I cried, very slightly offended. Why wouldn’t you tell everyone? It’s so interesting. You should tell everyone.
It appears that my first born believes I am a serial oversharer.
My very direct Aunty once said in a very irritated voice, I can’t understand why people post photos on Facebook of their sandwiches, I’m not interested in their sandwiches!
Well, dear Aunty, it might tempt you into trying a new sandwich recipe, it might have been a particularly delicious sandwich, the location of the sandwich might have been on the top of a beautiful mountain and it captured the joy of living so perfectly that they might have wanted to share that moment with you. It could also have been a sandwich they shared with friends they hadn’t seen in years or a sandwhich which brought back a flood of memories from their childhood.
And don’t forget there’s usually that little MUTE or UNFOLLOW button if you don’t want to see your friend’s sandwiches.
I know that there are things that are shared on the internet that really shouldn’t be shared but actually the act of sharing a moment is a sharing of joy, of heartache, of beauty, of hilarity, of deep thought and eternal truth.
It is interesting to see what people deem to be newsworthy, or not.
Life involves people and people are fascinating. Even if you live a quiet life or if you live a life of hardship, you cannot avoid seeing something of note around you that touches your heart in some way or another.
Sharing it with someone else either in person or online brings them in on it, as a call to action – either to rejoice, or to laugh, or to mourn or to bring about justice.
I am therefore unapologetically an oversharer and you regularly will see my dinners online because they were delicious and you can never have enough dinner ideas when you’re bored of your food.
I have however learned a few tips on curating my oversharing and thought I’d share them here , they are applicable to undersharers too.
I have a number of people in my circle of friends around the globe who post absolutely nothing which makes me sad because I want to hear about their lives too, especially if I haven’t seen them in a while.
Tips for Oversharers and Undersharers
In this age where internet privacy and in person privacy is important – remember to overshare only your news and not other people’s – unless you have their permission. This I have had to learn as the kids grow older. There are some things you can share and some things you can’t.
[Sorry in advance Amélie for sharing your chicken feet story]
Share things deliberately and avoid off the cuff sharing unless it is inoccuous. This is why I don’t have a snapchat account because I know that I can say stuff or do things that I later regret.
You don’t have to share everything in your life or say everything on your mind. Stop and think before you share. Some personal journeys need to marinate in your soul for a while before they are shared publicly. Sometimes we talk before God is finished speaking and sometimes he needs to deal with us privately before we share it.
Good communication is the key to avoiding misunderstandings. An argument can be avoided by sharing what cannot be seen from the outside. You might look ok on the outside to someone and they would never know what is going on inside you. Also what you say isn’t necessarily what is heard by the other person. Reflecting back what someone says to you is a good way of checking you got all the facts right. Don’t be afraid to check the potentially ambiguous details.
Share kindly and lovingly, and if you can’t, then don’t say it. There are too many people who don’t realise how hurtful their irritated comment in CAPS LOCK on facebook is. If you wouldn’t say it to their face, don’t post it online. CAPS LOCK or using red font by the way is like physically shouting at someone. Please don’t do it, however urgent the issue.
Keep a tab on the tone of your voice both online and offline. What I mean is that if your posts are all negative and mean all the time, it doesn’t do you any good and it doesn’t do other people any good. There is already enough bad news in people’s world, they need some encouragement and some joy in their lives to keep them sane and so do you.
By sharing the good things in person and online you actually lift your own spirit too. I regularly look at my social media accounts and try to see what themes I’ve been posting on lately to see if there’s an imbalance.
Share your pain not just the good moments. Sharing the hard stuff with other people means that, if you want it, they can comfort you, help you practically, pray for you and generally sympathise or give advice if they’ve been through it. Sharing these moments show that you trust them. We are not meant to do things on our own, we are created to be in community so that we can get through the hard stuff. You also never know when you will connect with someone going through what you are going through and can help them to feel less isolated and alonge.
Share the end of the story too. People tend to stay on the last thing you said so if the last thing that you said was the depressing disaster that happened to you, in their minds you are frozen in that place still even though you have moved on, are healed, have had a financial breakthrough or a new job or are now feeling much better having shared what you are going through.
If you can’t share your thoughts yet, share a holding statement. This actually enables people to be patient and wait for your reply to their question or their need for information. It works really well in the workplace as well in social situations.
When someone sends you an email or asks you a question, it’s good to let them know that you saw your message and you’re thinking about it and you’ll get back to them. If you don’t reply, it’s like blanking someone or ignoring them in real life.
Often when I’ve invited people to a meal, I’ve noticed that they just don’t reply at all and this usually means that they’re not coming, they’re busy or they don’t want to come. Misunderstandings happen in these social circumstances. Please reply, even if it’s the fact that you can’t reply yet.
Choose your audience and don’t take offence when others choose their audience too. Not everything needs to share everything with everyone and depending on the sensitivity of the information depends where you share it. Whether are conscious of it or not, everyone has an Inner Circle, a Middle Circle and an Outer Circle. And btw, you may occasionally come across people who shouldn’t be in any of those. We tend to share our most private sensitive information with our inner circle just like Jesus did, then when it becomes less sensitive, we share it with our middle circle of friends and finally it becomes public knowledge when we share it with our outer circle. This is natural and wise practice.
What’s tough to accept is when you thought you were in someone’s inner circle but you turned out to be in their middle or outer circle or not in any circle at all.
Collect stories and share them. Some people, when I ask them what’s new say, nothing really. Actually there are lots of things happening all around everyone all the time but sometimes we don’t think they’re newsworthy to others or we don’t notice them. Noticing and sharing these stories when you see people makes conversation flow when things are unnatural and stilted.
Reciprocate the sharing, don’t stalk. Like I said before, I share but I also want to keep contact with my friends. In the world of social media there are a number of people who want to hear your news but don’t realise that you also want to hear their news (and see their sandwiches) because you care about them and appreciate them. Communication is relationship. Let’s keep those relationships alive.
For oversharers, realise that the totality of sharing that you see people doing in person and online is not the totality of the sharing they are actually doing.
For undersharers, realise that the totality of the thoughts and conversations that you have shared in your head is not the totality of the thoughts that you have shared outloud. People can’t hear what you think.
Listen to other people’s stories and drop your agenda. Sometimes us oversharers can be so much in our own heads that we chatter away and don’t leave room for anyone else to have space to share their thoughts and stories.
One of the things I’ve had to learn is to listen and ask questions and to stop trying to wangle my interesting story into the conversation. This focuses you less on yourself and more on others, and gets you over a lot of awkward social interactions. Most people, not all, if you ask the right series questions will speak for quite a long time and you will find out some really interesting things about them.
My favourite tiktok video is an Australian living in Paris who describes comically how people in his circle of acquaintances don’t take an interest in anyone around them. He talks about how at a party he casually drops in the fact that he used to work at Eurovision and the person he talked to had absolutely no questions to bounce off of that information.
Just a side note to all the current generation – this is how conversation works – questions and answers, you pick up clues of something interesting in what someone hints at and you ask them questions. No more social Billy No Mates moments. You ask questions and they will chat away. It is possible to find conversation topics with just about anyone if you pay enough attention.
Happy Sharing to you all! May it enrich your life in all the right ways.
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