It wasn’t terribly late when she got up. She had managed to take a shower. She put new sheets on the bed, for which she would thank herself that night. She even put the seedlings back out into the sun, which she had rescued the night before from the hailstorm. All that before breakfast. But now, with her coffee and bagel, and seated in her favorite armchair, she found herself, as she did many mornings, peering into the windows of other people’s lives through her little, rectangle, crystal “ball.”

It always felt like voyeurism. Rarely did any real connection come from this morning ritual, not least because she seldom commented and even less often posted things herself. It had replaced her morning meditation, morning prayer. Instead of using this precious time to center herself, listen to her own voice, root herself in her own values and dreams, she let herself become distracted with the lives that others projected out into the world for everyone to see.

Some of those lives seemed chaotic, and she felt as though she was being pulled into a vortex of drama that she had no power or proximity to untangle, though staring at them on the screen gave her the false sense that she should somehow. Some lives seemed so rooted in a predictable script, so bound to the track stretched before them, that they failed to notice it was the very same track that trailed behind them. Some lives seemed vibrant and creative and did sometimes give her helpful impulses, inspire her, or helped her feel less alone with what she had always thought were her own idiosyncrasies. But many seemed too polished, too pristine. She did not envy those show-case lives; she didn’t even admire them. She just didn’t believe them. No one is flawless. She was sure of that. Nevertheless, these lives highlighted her own flaws as if with a glaring neon paint.

So why peer through this magic window into lives that were as far away and disconnected from her reality as could be? “Yes, why do that?” she thought! “I have not grown one centimeter as a person while scrolling along through this bottomless post-pit.” And with that realization, she derailed herself from this circular track, and laid her phone on the table.