Oh do I have interesting observations to share with you. Remember Sally and Jane? Well, Sally's mom, Martha, was online yesterday evening while she talked to her husband Peter. I got to hear the whole conversation and it was highly enlightening.
Martha was feeling quite despondent and worn down. She told her husband about the things going on in the lives of the people on the board and they prayed for a few of the more serious situations together. After perusing a few more boards and several pages on each Martha turned from the computer and went to the Kitchen for a drink of water. Peter noticed the change in her and asked what was wrong. Her answer surprised both of us.
"I don't know!" she said. "I just feel so tired and worn out. I don't think I'm depressed but I do think I could be driving in that general direction. I just don't know how to get off that highway and onto a more pleasant one."
Her husband is a very wise man. Peter looked at her carefully, sat thoughtfully for a few minutes, and then spoke words I never expected. "Martha, do you think it is because of the boards you frequent? Not that the boards themselves are bad, but because by their very nature, people tend to post their problems or exciting triumphs. They don't post about the normal things of life.
"I hear you tell me about one woman's husband's new job, or another heading to Iraq. Someone has a wayward teen, another was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease. There was a fire, a baby born, a lifetime friend lost. Each thing is often so extreme. People don't post about the housework, the phone call they enjoyed, the candy kisses they ate under the table with the kids, or the way the lemon pudding didn't set so it became lemon sauce over the cake and was really good!"
They discussed how the internet usually only shows the highs or lows of life and little of the middle which makes up so much of life. Peter thought that it was probably very emotionally draining to read of such extremes. For women who are prone to comparisons it could even be dangerous. Their lives could easily be considered 'hum-drum' in comparison. The doldrums love situations like that.
As they talked, I remembered Martha's daughter, Sally. She had such a skewed idea of marriage and motherhood from the posts she read on her mother's boards. I'm sure it never occurred to her that the women on the boards, even those in the worst sounding marriages, would be shocked to see the impression left on others. To them, life isn't horrid and miserable... there is just a small corner of their life that is. But, when it is all you know of someone... if all they ever share of themselves is their troubles, trials, and miserations, no wonder others see them in such a negative light.
I hope Sally talks to her mother about her observations. I know that many women do not live a life that their daughters would WANT to emulate... but how sad to think that it is a life that no one would ever want to emulate because the jobs themselves are truly distasteful. How untrue!