Instagram as a Tea Room
From Social Media Eremite to Supporter
Until 2021 I have been avoiding social media like the plague, or rather, like Covid.
I have a Facebook account to keep in touch with friends from Erasmus and organizing parties, but I barely posted anything. I arrived at a point where even my mum and my grandmother had an Instagram account and, to be honest, all those cute dachshunds videos were enticing.
It may sound pretty weird for a Millennial to be reluctant on this subject, but the truth is that there were too many fears barring me from stepping onto the virtual square of the world. Until now.
Conformity
As a teenager, I naively hoped the way to get friends was to be pleasing and overfriendly. I hated conflicts and never really spoke my mind in fear of judgment and rejection. Expressing a personality onto social media was beyond unthinkable.
What if someone disliked my photos and comments? And what if they did like it? So desperate for validation, would I have tried to look and speak as I was expected to?
The flood of captivating content would have also contributed to influencing my self-perception. I felt certain I was not strong enough to keep on my way of being; I was even not sure I knew who I was! Safer to sit on the sidelines.
Brain Sanding
Later on, I discovered the powerful and insidious hypnosis of the screen.
We all know how it feels when we get home after a long day, finally laying on the couch with our steamy feet in the air and, phone in our hands, let go of all the stress watching one silly thing after another. Well, I am not talking about that. I am talking about what follows: the part where we cannot help scrolling to the next image or video and, slowly but surely, we slip from well-deserved relaxation into oblivion. Before supper, we have hit Zombieland. The only thing that brings me back, at this point, is hunger.
Even so, the apps are still enticingly calling us back; how difficult to resist! Ultimately, we find ourselves in a vicious circle of alienation where the only thing we feel like doing is surrender and be led around the internet.
I define this as brain sanding. YouTube already humiliated my capacity of self-control countless times, and I expected Instagram to be just as effective. Again, I thought staying out of the game was easier. I sensed my own weakness.
Eventually, however, I think my elusion to the dark side of the apps was a limited and quite miserable solution, just as abstinence is a means of contraception.
Creativity Planet
Recently, the restrictions due to the pandemic made me feel so lonely I even reached out for virtual interactions on social platforms and so I became aware that there may have been worthwhile reasons for them (even more compelling than kitten videos). I started realising I sort of cut out myself from a part of the world that actually greatly influences my life.
LinkedIn is almost mandatory to find a job and Instagram is essential to present a ‘normal’ image of ourselves to the world. A friend told me she would not date someone she could not stalk a little bit on Instagram ahead.
It was absurd and I felt like a wild animal approaching a human camp: scared but curious. Whether I liked it or not, I recognised this is how things work nowadays, I might as well embrace this technology and tailor it to my necessities rather than adopting the Amish logic.
I then realised that online evolves a culture parallel to the ‘traditional’ that one may find on books, newspapers, and tv. Even if it is not all great quality content, it has vast resonance. As Valentina Tanni well explained in her book “Memestetica”, something unprecedented is happening in the wider field of art: an army of amateurs can freely express their creativity in a new combination of self-learning, self-production, and self-distribution.
All this was an exciting prospect for me! I have loved writing since living memory, but of all the notebooks and files I filled up, I never shared anything with anyone. Not that I aspire to success (self-sabotage took care of that) but I would like to test my work to a critical reading. I finally want to step out of the sidelines, and social media seems the right place to do so: throwing my deepest thoughts and emotions to a plethora of known and unknown persons sounds a great way to prove my skills! Why not join the fray? Even if Instagram is not the ideal place to write, it could be a suitable gym to move the first steps.
Alongside all these wonders, I still had not forgotten the old fears. Also, I was conscious of the toxic reverse of this world: being a reflection of the real one, there must have been loads of junk. Oddly enough, a solution to this dilemma came from a book about tea.
The Book of Tea
In Okakura Kakuzo “The Book of Tea” I expected to learn about the appropriate gestures and ceramics for the Japanese ceremony instead; I found myself immersed in a story of the collision of Western and Eastern cultures. Okakura’s vision of art inspired me to think of my Instagram page as a virtual tea room.
The Ideograms composing the word Sukya, the Japanese corresponding term, can be translated as Abode of Fancy. An evocative name that describes the nature of this very special place, separate from the rest of the world, originally conceived to shelter a personal artistic impulse.
The tea ceremony was, moreover, an opportunity for an encounter between sympathetic minds. Similarly, I like to think that Instagram makes it possible for distant people to come together and get inspired through the appreciation of shared passions.
Clearly, this can only happen if there is the right state of mind from both sides, certainly not the prevailing feature on internet communities. The screen of physical distance allows brazen and violent attitudes to emerge. The Sukya, on the contrary, was also known as the House of Peace since weapons were banned from inside it; even Samurai had to leave their katanas beside the entrance. A small and square doorway, aimed at instilling humbleness even to the most distinguished host.
Inside, the room was simple since it was meant to be the House of Asymmetry. That indicated an appreciation for the beauty embedded in imperfect and impermanent things. I loved this concept as it excuses the amateur character of my works! Nevertheless, it is also a warning to not get bogged down in the frustrating aspiration of perfection. No matter how hard, I have to accept the results of my efforts with a certain easiness and not allow myself to be silenced anymore by insecurity and imperfections — they will always be present.
Above everything, the tea room was meant for the master and not the master for the room. Instagram is a tool for our use, we do not live to post pictures on Instagram.
An Awakening Sip
More than anything else in the book, one concept struck and captured me, an idea that could twist the interpretation of Instagram.
In the past, tea was not just a popular drink and recreation. It was a fine art translating in acts ideals of Taoist and Buddhist philosophy. It was a rite celebrating the greatness of the smallest life events. Other than that, tea was also a stimulating beverage, helpful to keep concentration during the long meditations. Nowadays, our consciousness is vulnerable to a constant flow of images and sounds, especially on Instagram.
By applying the meaning of the tea cult to the present day, we could rediscover it as a ritual waking us up from the mental drowsiness resulting from the robotic actions of our routines. I would like to quote Gian Carlo Calza’s acute words in commentary on Okakura’s book (freely translated from the Italian edition):
“When overwhelmed by daily events, we risk forgetting who we are, tea can bring us back from the vain external noise to interior peace.”
If on one side, social media offers a space for fun, inspiration and self-expression, on the other side, it threatens our self-determination by exploiting our weaknesses. Conscious about that, awakened by a cup of tea, we can break conformist patterns and rethink who we are and what we are really doing. Engaging with any form of art, even better, pursuing our own creative work, as an amber sip warming us up from the inside, could help us remember what’s important to us beyond sheer survival.
In this light, I hope I will make more aware use of Instagram: utilizing it as a tool enriching my day rather than draining off its meaning. Laura’s Tea House is going to be my Instagram page’s name. A place where I hope I will share something of my world. Shall you be welcome, have a seat and let me serve you a cuppa!
