Guess You Had To Be There

Guess You Had To Be There

John Paul Derryberry

It was the day after I made my first big decision as a program leader. I had taken sweatpants off the approved attire list, so I was subjected to the weird outrage from my employees during the meeting. Sweatpants are a lot of things, but they are not professional. So I walked into work the next day and two staff, less than happy with my choice, had decided to purchase and wear nursing scrubs for their shift. I busted up laughing at their ingenious way of staying comfortable while following the new policy. I'm not doing the situation justice here. I guess you had to be there to fully get it.

This is a phase we are slowly losing in a world ever more interconnected, where we can share in a couple of clicks on our phone the latest funny, engaging, sad, or unfortunate event in our lives. Maybe we have lost that notion of using the phrase, "You had to be there". The feeling of being there in person and seeing things unfold live just has more depth on every level. This isn't some, "social media is horrible," statement. Like everything else at our fingertips, it's a tool to stay in touch, promote good and healthy views, or disconnect, isolate, and promote hate. Social media is only productive in the right hands, like every other invented tool.

Yet somehow, we feel less inclined to have more, "You had to be there moments" than ever before. We somehow think our online presence is more important than our in-person actions, or at least it feels like we are trending that way. We can be anyone we want to be online, which is a dangerous game we play with our mental and emotional health. It's impossible to carry two separate identities inside one person for too long; there are always consequences for that type of behavior.

In-person interactions always go further into our soul, swim longer in our thought patterns, and stay with us long into the night. It is where we create lifelong connections or attempt to recover from a crushing defeat. The stakes are real, the emotions are high, and life is being lived. So I get the appeal of the online presence, the allusions to real-life without the high stakes of real feelings. It just cannot have the same meaning as in-person connections.

It can't create the feeling of remembering the first time we heard that song or how the room stopped moving when that one person walked in and took our breath away. It has no chance of replacing the moment you make a connection of shared interest with someone, and you now have a lifelong friend. The best example of this is the moment I knew I would marry Anne. I remember the shirt I was wearing, the music playing, the place I was, and the exact moment I got a glimpse of her in a moment of pure joy and understanding of what love for me ultimately means. I would love to go into detail with you about it, but to be honest, it's most definitely a moment where you had to be there.