Real talk.

(This is just what I've been thinking about lately, knowing I could be off the mark on a lot of it, and knowing I might change my mind on some of it at some point. Just some current thoughts/opinions. :))  

     Those Instagram accounts full of travel and pretty stationary and only good things are not real life.

     Real life is having a meltdown at 9:30 in the morning and crying for two hours. Real life is greasy hair and a gross bathroom. Real life is not being able to love like Jesus and feeling the weight of your sin every single day. 

     And just as it's not as perfect as we portray it to be, it's simultaneously better, richer, and fuller than a square image could ever convey. Real life is the moments that can't be told through 140 characters because they are too good, too sweet, too real. 

     What I'm saying is that real life is not what you see online and most of the time it's not what you put online. Real life is when you turn your phone off and turn your senses on to experience all of it. It's happening and we're liable to miss it if we don't look up. Every so often I realize how heavily I've been influenced by what others post. Their pictures are beautiful and gosh, do they do anything but travel from one amazing place to another?! How are their lives so...lovely?

     And that's just it. They're not. Their lives have every bit as much heartache and joy as mine does, and I can either keep scrolling through pictures of their mountaintops, or I can log out and make the best of my valleys. 

     I've lost count of all the posts, statuses, captions, and tweets I've read about being real, to the point of rolling my eyes and thinking, "Seriously? Another plaid-wearing hipster with his feet dangling off a railroad track?" (And I know there are so many people with good intentions. Not belittling that.) I'm not sure if it still is, but for a while, "authentic" seemed to be the most popular word on the Internet. It's a funny thing how everyone wants to be one of a kind and genuine, and in the process, they look exactly like everyone else. Maybe, just maybe, the Internet isn't the place to put all that energy into being authentic. Maybe REAL LIFE is. Maybe posting pictures of our coffee shop experiences and our killer road trips isn't actually helping others. Social media undoubtedly has its pros and uses (and I like seeing pictures of people having a good time!), but genuineness starts face to face. Let's be real (pun intended): genuine friendship and encouragement don't come from Facebook. These things are given and received primarily in real life, and they're not usually something you can experience through a screen.

     Why is there such an emphasis on wanting to be authentic, anyway? It's a word with good intentions, but it's not Jesus. Why don't we skip writing captions exclaiming our search for authenticity and instead just say that we want to be like Him? Being real and genuine is nice (and important, duh), but we can have an even bigger goal and desire to share with the world.

     I read a quote years ago that has stuck with me and molded my view of a lot of things:

"Originality is not a concept found in the Bible." - Gregory Wilbur

     Boom. We are to stand apart from the world, yes. But that's not being original. That's being like Jesus. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that we need to have original thoughts, ideas, adventures, wardrobes, lives, anything. Do we even know how to live life without trying to be different? It's what everyone wants and basically what we're told to be. But why? Why do I need to be different from the people who've gone before me or the people around me? What's wrong with being like someone who has lived a life for the Lord, even if it wasn't epic most of the time? I can't help but think that the wise thing to do is follow the example of those that have gone before us, and not try to blaze our own trails so much.

     Just keepin' it real, y'all. Peace. ;)