Upon my back, to defend my belly; upon my wit to defend my wiles; upon my secrecy to defend mine honesty; my mask, to defend my beauty.
– Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida
This past week, my dad and I were discussing public vs. private life, particularly image cultivation in the selfie age and Christmas letters.
Christmas letters are passé, but if you’ve never written or received one, essentially they’re an annual brag-fest, something social media allows us to parse out 365 days a year. The Christmas letter was a big picture version of what social media empowers on a daily basis, that is, to be person and publicist, to share pictures of the shrimp tartare that came out perfectly, but not the coconut shrimp we burnt to a crisp. We’ll check-in at the concert but gloss over the day the cat peed on the new rug, the dog peed on the cat, and the washing machine broke down.
Similarly, Christmas letters are full of updates on exciting trips, how well the kids are doing, new babies, new pets, new jobs, promotions, etc.
To be fair, Christmas letters and Facebook bluster are perfectly natural human inventions. It’s in our genetic makeup to think we’re smarter/more gifted/better than average. Immunity to reality is a survival mechanism. If there wasn’t a little rose-tint in our glasses, we’d find it hard to get out of bed in the morning, besides, too much realism throws the social order out of whack. For example, we take great strides to convince ourselves and one another that children, money and marriages make us happy, despite the fact that, in the aggregate, they don’t.
Call me a curmudgeon, but studies back me up. If you’re like most parents, you point to your kids as your greatest sources of joy, which isn’t wrong, just delusional. Memories of cooing babies in bassinets, marching band finals and blissful weddings have merely blotted out the vast majority of child-rearing moments: dull, selfless service to people who at some point pretend they’re not related to you.
Anyway… one year, my mom took over for my dad writing the Drake family Christmas letter and dispelled with the “happy family” crap. I’m not sure how much she dialed back the braggadocio, but any honest assessment of, say, 2003, would have included several graphs about chemotherapy, hair falling out, fear of dying, my sister’s struggles with suicide, and my alcoholism. Merry Christmas, everyone!
This is my attempt at that – a realist’s assessment of 2016. Realism doesn’t mean discounting the good, it just means taking the good with the bad. Because frankly, while popular culture is pulling out all the stops to record 2016 as the worst year ever (discounting 1348, 1919 and 1968, to name a few), my 2016 went down as one of my best.
For your consideration:
Draketaketwo 