I like to take breaks from actively using social media, especially Instagram. I do that as I mostly find my mind gravitating toward that app. And for the sake of good mental health, often that habit can be debilitating.

Different people use Instagram’s direct messages in their unique way. An active user would have observed that it is primarily used for friends sharing reels or posts that they find interesting or amusing with each other.

The last I tried this break it was about two months back.

As I logged back in, I noticed, read, and engaged with some of the direct messages I had received.

As mentioned above, the pattern was the same; different friends had sent posts and reels per their tendency.

After a little hiatus of frenzied social media activity, one feels a sense of ‘vairagya’ (a lovely and profound Sanskrit word for detachment) from the application in general. So as I kept scrolling through the DM’s to check if I had anything significant to respond to. I intended to engage less with posts as such.

Vairagya bro! (notice the term-dropping? More to follow as you read on)

Earlier, people used to feel a spiritual high upon neglecting worldly temptations of greed and lust, and modern-day human beings get their spiritual fix by ignoring Instagram posts and reels!

One friend’s DM’s were a different case altogether, though. I logged back for some specific purpose and was on my ‘Vairagya’ high anyway. As I noticed the posts and reels sent by this friend, they appealed to my interests and resonated with the Vairagya vibes I was so full of then!

As I patiently read the posts or watched the reels, I did not for once feel I was needlessly wasting my time.

This small, seemingly insignificant happening made me ruminate. It is never about the medium. It is about the people. It is always about the people.

Heaven or hell

Happiness or sadness

Religion or fanaticism

Positive Mental health or breakdown

Inspiration or perspiration (just wanted something to rhyme, sorry)

It is the people 🙂

People are always more important than the medium they connect through

Why?

Because the value of communication lies within the exchange of ideas, emotions, and knowledge between individuals rather than the tools used to facilitate that exchange.

Once, a spiritual master from Vrindavan told me, “Heaven may or may not be a geographical location, but it is certainly found in a happy home.”

On the same note, Ichiro Kishimi’s book, Courage To Be Disliked says, “All problems are interpersonal relationship problems.”

The Smiling Panda has observed that most value in life is derived through good relationships.

How often do we wait before categorizing an entity based on sample size?

Sadly, the sample size can be merely one interaction in the real and virtual worlds.

In the virtual world, that interaction may happen to be with an account without a name and a picture. And then we end up pronouncing judgments based on that.

“This entire race/community/industry/gender/country etc. is wretched!”

“What makes you say that?”

“Oh, this one time, this one human on Twitter was writing this and this..”

I do not know about you, dear reader, but I have found myself there. I hope that from here on in, I can reign in this tendency. After all, it is about the people, not the medium, and thank goodness, there is a wide variety of people- on both ends of the good and bad spectrum.

My essential learning has been that communication is not about the tool or medium used but about people connecting positively with each other.

The purpose of any medium is to bridge the gap between individuals. Still, the people and their interaction carry real value and meaning.

We can also keep the above in mind when we curate who we follow or choose to interact with on social media.

Though I understand that the algorithms mostly decide what is shown to us, we can try our best to influence those sticky algorithms!

The Instagram direct messages from that friend did have a lot to teach and also got me out of my writing rut. Ha ha!

Thank you for reading until the end of the piece. I hope your investment of time in this blog helped you on some level.

This blog exists because of kind readers like you.

It is not the blog…

Kushagra.