Want to impress someone?

If there's a forum where impressing seems to be going out of control it's on social media in general and Facebook in particular. Folks showing off that they're handsome, smart, knowledgeable, affluent, well-traveled, famous and so on.

Evidently, the anxious human condition finds in affecting others a marvelous outlet, and social media is the ideal place for that, so when there's an urge to impress, there's a magic and easy tool immediately available to everyone.

Does it hit its target, namely impress all the onlookers? Partly so. Does it go further? You bet; it also fosters envy, jealousy and a host of other nefarious feelings. In fact, impressing seldom hits it target with all of its might. It splatters its energy under the form of resentment and other dark reactions.

When all is said and done, we can only impress ourselves and what's posted on Facebook to influence others is often so perverted that it would hardly touch us if we were truly objective about its contents.

A good place to start might be to work much harder at impressing ourselves and forgetting about the gallery of Facebook “voyeurs” altogether. Then, and only then, we might be impressed of the impression we make...