You scroll aimlessly down your screen, peering into the lives of your “friends.”

You’ve shared laughter, tears, and life’s deepest fears with many of your closest companions. Others you know more casually.

A third layer of “friends” you wouldn’t recognize if they showed up at your door. But that’s okay because they have you “hidden” on their faKebook finest.

Inauthenticity at its finest.

Scrolling further, you suddenly feel a hole of hollowness piercing your heart.

She or he smiles to the world, against the background of a place you’ve longed to visit forevermore.

Yet your life path prevented you from traveling. Maybe money, health, or parenting responsibilities blocked your way. Or perhaps caring for your elderly parent. Maybe even the addiction of a family member in Realbook, as opposed to Facebook.

You sigh deeply, fighting back the tears.

FaKebook envy certainly is alive and eating holes in the hearts of all who peer into the so-called lives of others. 

Scrolling further, your finger brushes across someone’s face in high school that you wished you could have been. Smart, good-looking, and possibly worth millions. He and his equally amazing wife smile into the screen.

But then the beat of the music stops as your eyes grow wide. Cancer is thrashing its ugly presence on the lovely couple. The bleakest cloud covers the smile on the woman’s face. She wonders how long his hand will grip hers tightly.

Fortunately you find some funny posts that make you laugh out loud.  That’s the moment you realize maybe your life isn’t really too bad.

A friend messages you. Through Facebook, that her daughter was hospitalized with anorexia. The mother exudes beauty, intelligence and owns an extremely successful company.  

But some issues sink deeper than fat bank accounts. Once again, the shadows of despair for this family create dissonance in your perspective.

The truth shifts somewhere beneath the stories of your FaKebook friends. Your life, suddenly shimmers essence of beautiful summer days.

The people you’d thought caught life by the tail – well, they also experience eclipses of the soul. Once again, you grasp that allthat glitters is simply sunbeams hitting the folds of tinfoil.

Shafts of sunlight burst upon your soul, and you know through and through you are truly, thoroughly blessed.~