“So live that you wouldn’t be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.”
Will Rogers
How much of what really goes on in our homes would we feel comfortable exposing to the world? The craziness, the gossip, the candid conversations? Of course some aspects of life are just private, but if that privacy was breached, would we be able to stand by all we said and did when no one was watching?
I recently had an exchange on Instagram with @illuminosaurus on her post about the Hawthorne effect, which refers to the tendency of some of us in some situations to act differently when we think someone is watching. Think – cameras in elevators, in department stores or in certain workplaces, and the classic hand washing question: in a public bathroom, are we more likely to wash our hands when someone else is there (Covid considerations aside)?
💡It got me thinking, how much would our words and actions change if we believed someone was ALWAYS watching, because in reality, we don’t have as much privacy as we used to.
We never really know when someone is capturing a moment on their smartphone📱 camera when we are out in public, or when someone is forwarding our email or message to someone else, and I swear Instagram is listening to my conversations with some of the ads that pop up on my feed!
✨ As a wise educator of mine once said, “assume anything you communicate in writing could be plastered on a billboard in Times Square,” and proceed accordingly. We never know where something we say in a private text, DM or email might end up, and we might be surprised at who reads/views our social media posts.
So, we can try to live our lives as if there is always someone watching. I don’t mean sharing everything, but rather making sure we are consistent in what we do and say, such that if it all got out . . . 🦜, we wouldn’t be mortified.
