Why joining Facebook has caused me to reflect on my life

I was very hesitant to join Facebook with the term very hesitant being somewhat of an understatement. I think that I first heard about Facebook near the beginning of 2005 and finally joined the summer of 2008. There were many reasons that I had for not joining Facebook with one of them being a desire to keep the past in the past so to speak. I value the connections that I have made with people during different time points in my life, but I don't necessarily feel the need to keep up these connections indefinitely. Also, reconnecting with people from the past tends to bring up buried feelings and makes me question the decisions that I have made in my life. Thus, joining Facebook has really been a impetus for personal reflection.

I was feeling kind of overwhelmed with all of the connections that I was making last week through Facebook. I seemed to stay up later and later each night clicking through the pages that contained "friends" of my "friends" looking for people to connect with. I realized sorting through pictures of people that I vaguely know that I have missed a lot of opportunities to get to know people. The self-criticism begins: why didn't I try to be more social in college. Why am I still afraid of reaching out to new people?

My self reflective thoughts had been swimming through my head all week so when I met three guys from Tennessee who just graduated high school on the overnight train to Florence on Friday I was eager to share my feelings with them. We were discussing their decisions about which college to attend. This is something that I often think about with regard to my own decision. It's not that I didn't like my college experience (it was enjoyable), but I didn't really explore all my options or make my decision in any logical manner. I had a sort of breakthrough after struggling with this issue for many years while talking to the guys from Tennesse.

The problem with trying to decide whether I've made the right decisions in life is that I can't observe the counterfactual. That is, I don't know what would have happened in my life had I made alternate decisions. I can imagine that my life would have been better had I actually chosen to date guys who liked me at the beginning of high school rather than guys who were pressured by their friends to have a girlfriend but maybe the alternate reality would not have proven as rosy as I picture it. I deride myself for not socializing enough in college, but I worked really hard while I was in college and now I am having a great experience in graduate school at Berkeley.

I don't regret not going out on that Friday night when it made sense to stay home and study. These nights may not be as memorable, but I think that cumulatively these sacrifices led to something good (but I don't know since I can't observe the counterfactual).

My current Facebook profile picture: