There’s a subtle difference between sharing your joy and being mindful of how it may be received.
Life is funny in so many ways. For all the progress we’ve made convincing ourselves that everyone is equal, we’ve sure gotten incredibly good at creating systems that quietly tell us where we stand.
Go figure…
First class and coach. VIP and general admission. Preferred customers and everyone else. It’s exhausting. Priority boarding, private clubs, better tables, better seats, and airport lounges where somehow I guess the cheese cubes improve with status.
And within every level, there always seems to be another level. Another velvet rope.
Think Super Mario Bros.
People have different circumstances, different opportunities, different incomes, and different experiences. Some people have worked incredibly hard for what they have. Some have been extraordinarily lucky.
There’s nothing wrong with any of it.
The interesting part is how much we choose to show the distinction.
Because there’s a difference between enjoying where you are and needing other people to know where you are.
And apparently, we’ve even managed to bring this strange little ranking system to social media.
A thumbs-up.👍🏻
A heart.❤️
Don’t tell me they mean exactly the same thing.
Because they really don’t.
A like says, I saw you.
A heart says, I felt you.
And once you notice the difference, you can’t really unsee it.
You’re scrolling along perfectly content until suddenly you think, Interesting. Susan got a heart and I got a like.
Nobody wants to admit we notice these things.
But we do.
Human beings have always been interested in knowing where we stand. We just used to require actual conversations to figure it out. Now apparently an emoji can do the job way before we’ve even finished our morning coffee.
You leave a thoughtful comment. You get a thumbs-up. Someone else leaves one and gets a heart.
Does it matter?
Probably not.
Does it feel different?
Sometimes.
Maybe that’s why I personally try to react the same way to people who take the time to comment on something I post. Someone stopped scrolling. They read what I wrote. They took a moment out of their day to respond.
I appreciate that.
And it takes exactly the same amount of effort to tap a heart as it does a thumbs-up.
So why create a distinction where one isn’t necessary?
It sounds almost ridiculous when we’re talking about emojis, but I think there’s something much larger underneath it.
People notice how we make them feel.
We notice who gets the warmer greeting. Who gets invited. Who gets acknowledged. Who gets called first. Who gets the heart and who gets the like.
We recognize distinctions. And distinctions are everywhere.
Money creates them. Success creates them. Relationships create them. Access creates them. Even airlines establish them long before we’ve even gotten through security.
Some distinctions are simply part of life.
The question is what we do with them.
There’s nothing wrong with sitting in first class. There’s nothing wrong with having a beautiful home, taking an extraordinary vacation, buying something wonderful, or getting the best table in the restaurant.
Enjoy it. Life is short. Don’t we know it.
But perhaps there’s something especially gracious about enjoying good fortune without using it to establish your position relative to somebody else.
Because there will always be another level.
Someone will always have more. And someone will always have less.
Most importantly, there’s a difference between sharing joy and displaying rank.
One invites people into your happiness and the other reminds them where they stand in comparison to it.
And maybe that distinction matters more than any of the others.
You don’t have to minimize your accomplishments to make other people comfortable. You don’t have to apologize for success. You certainly don’t have to pretend something wonderful isn’t wonderful.
But you also don’t have to make somebody else feel smaller in order to fully enjoy it.
The same is true in relationships.
Of course we have different levels of closeness. Not everyone is our best friend and not every acquaintance occupies the same place in our life.
That’s a given.
But there’s a difference between knowing someone has a different place and making sure they know it, too.
Maybe that’s what bothers me about the heart and the like.
It isn’t really the emoji.
It’s what the distinction can communicate.
We already live in a world constantly sorting us.
First class. Coach. VIP. General admission. Followers. Likes. Invitations. Memberships. Tables. Seats.
We don’t need to pretend those differences don’t exist.
Because they do.
Maybe we simply need to be a little more thoughtful about when it’s necessary to point them out.
Because eventually the plane lands. The party ends. The restaurant closes. The post disappears down the feed.
And perhaps real class has never been about where we sit, what we have, or which room we’re invited into.
Maybe real class is knowing exactly where you stand without ever needing to make someone else feel where they stand.
That’s my Reveal for the week.
Love,
Karin
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