I have already written 1,393 blog posts here and for sure, there are things that I have said that do not resonate with me anymore or even represent who I am today. But if I erase those ideas that I no longer hold, am I erasing a truth about who I was? Or am I finally allowing myself to grow beyond a moment that shouldn’t define me forever?
Isn’t life like a patchwork quilt—every scrap of fabric, good or bad, stitched together to form who we are today?
How do you want to be remembered? And who gets to decide? You? Or the internet’s perfect memory?
Given our digital footprint, it seems difficult to escape our past selves, even when we have changed for the better. If you have done something wrong and it has been publicized, it becomes you and not just a part of your life.
I thought about what I have read from State Surveillance:
The power of the camera is that it can freeze a moment in time. And it might not be your best moment. A temporary lapse in judgment becomes a permanent stain on your reputation. Or (and this is more likely, in my opinion), a camera can capture and reveal truths about human nature that we try to conceal from others.
Sure, a camera can capture and reveal truths about ourselves that we try to conceal from others. But is a single truth the whole truth? Does one frozen moment tell the full story of who we really are?
Thinking about my own undocumented mishaps, I am grateful I can simply forget about them. How sullen life would be if we are not given the gift of forgetting? If every misstep and every poorly worded sentence stayed visible forever, frozen in its worst light.
But because the internet doesn’t forget—keeping all records of our rights and wrongs—it becomes easy prey for anyone looking. Bad actors, bored people, or those who want to chase clout or make money from somebody else’s demise can always dig up our past, and it guarantees attention. And with most social media’s business model? More eyeballs mean more money.
And maybe we should call this what it is. Do you know what kind of beings dig up the dead? Hyenas and jackals, foxes and wild dogs, rats, and pigs. And those who not only dig up what’s buried but also desecrate them? Ghouls and corpse-eaters.
Watch what happens behind screens, the way we circle, the way we feed on snapshots of other people’s lives. We become something else.
From State Surveillance:
These days, we cut people off in a merging situation because we know we’ll never see them again and there will be no repercussions. Anonymity brings out the worst in us.
Anonymity doesn’t just bring out the worst in us—it transforms us into creatures who feast on someone else’s worst moment, who dig and dig until we have torn apart what should have been allowed to heal.
Can we no longer hold space for both who someone was and who they are becoming?
I am troubled by how we have built a system that preserves our mistakes in amber while denying us the grace to grow beyond them. We demand change from people while simultaneously refusing to let them change. We ask for accountability but offer no path to redemption.
We demand change from people while simultaneously refusing to let them change. We ask for accountability but offer no path to redemption.
Maybe the answer is choosing to see the whole person and not just the frozen moment. Maybe it’s recognizing that the patchwork quilt of someone’s life includes dark squares alongside bright ones, and that both are necessary to understand the whole pattern. Maybe it’s extending to others the grace we desperately hope someone will extend to us when we’re the ones frozen in our worst moment.
The internet never forgets. But we—we can choose to remember the whole story, not just the worst chapter.
jessa 