Pictures Don't Always Tell the Story
Anybody looking at the photographs I posted to the social internet via my phone this afternoon would have thought I had a delightful day wandering in the sunshine with my family, taking pictures of this, that, and the other.
Pictures don’t always tell the whole story though.
I’m reminded of something a good friend posted to Facebook a few weeks ago – that it’s dangerous to read the feed of friend’s exploits if you’re at all vulnerable, because people only tend to share their “highlight reel” – and when you compare that against every day life, it’s not great.
I wonder if it’s a sign of total and utter madness that I’m about to compare my own highlight reel against my own “every-day” ?
The truth about today beyond the pretty photos of a garden in the middle oh nowhere? How about being startled awake by your other half because you were supposed to be leaving the house in 20 minutes on a Sunday morning ? How about then driving for three quarters of an hour across the countryside (while normal families are probably eating toast, drinking tea, and reading the Sunday papers) in order to stand at the side of a rugby training pitch for a couple of hours. Then you drive an hour and a half across several counties to visit your in-laws, eat a rushed late lunch with them, and then drive for another half an hour to a country house in the middle of nowhere to wander around the gardens. After that, you return to their house, talk about going home soon for an hour, and then eventually get home so late that dinner comes from the worst chip-shop in town, and you find yourself clearing the kitchen and washing up at 8:30pm. Throughout the day you have been silently stressing out about work next week, and haven’t told anybody that you would have liked to stay home today and just switch off.
So yes… sometimes photos don’t tell the whole story.
Don’t get me wrong. Today was good. So was yesterday. But there was more to it than a photo of a pretty flower.