Social media is kind of wild when you really think about it. We scroll through everyone else’s lives and see beautiful sunsets, spotless houses, happy marriages, successful businesses, perfect vacations, adorable children who apparently never scream in the grocery store, and people who somehow have matching outfits, clean kitchens, thriving careers, a Bible study completed before 6 a.m., homemade bread rising peacefully on the counter and a cup of coffee sitting beside an open Bible in exactly the right beam of morning sunlight. Meanwhile, the rest of us are standing in the kitchen trying to remember whether we already reheated the same cup of coffee twice, there’s laundry in the dryer that has achieved permanent resident status, dinner is rapidly becoming “find something and eat it,” and I personally spent a good portion of today completely convinced it was Wednesday.
It is Thursday.
So clearly I am absolutely qualified to discuss having your life together.
But that’s the weird thing about social media. We take our entire messy, unedited, behind-the-scenes life and compare it to somebody else’s carefully selected fifteen seconds. We see their vacation picture but not the argument in the airport. We see their clean kitchen but not whatever room they shoved everything into before taking the picture. We see the smiling family photo but not the seventeen pictures immediately before it where one kid was crying, another was looking the wrong direction and Dad was reconsidering every decision that led him to agreeing to family pictures. We see someone’s success without seeing the years when absolutely nothing seemed to work. And pretty soon we’re sitting there thinking, wow, everyone else really has this figured out.
They don’t.
Which brings us to this photo.
Pretty, isn’t it?
Soft pink clouds. Beautiful sunset. Trees silhouetted against the horizon. Calm water reflecting the sky. I could put some inspirational quote over it about finding peace in still waters, add a different filter, perhaps throw in something about being grateful for quiet evenings in the country, and suddenly we’re one cursive font away from inspirational wall art at Hobby Lobby.
Guys.
That’s not a lake.
That is a manure lagoon.
A manure lagoon.
That gorgeous reflective body of water peacefully mirroring the sunset is full of manure.
what is.
Because apparently all you have to do is stand at the right angle, wait for a pretty sunset, bump up the colors and conveniently leave out the fact that your tranquil country lake smells considerably less like mountain air and considerably more like several hundred dairy cows have been contributing to it for quite some time. Suddenly manure storage looks like somewhere you’d expect a woman in a flowing white dress to stand barefoot while contemplating the meaning of life.
Although I would strongly recommend she not do that.
And before somebody sees “manure lagoon” and pictures farmers digging a giant hole in the ground and saying, “Well, hopefully that stays there,” that’s not how this works. Lagoons are specifically designed and constructed to contain manure and prevent it from leaking into the surrounding soil and groundwater. There are rules and regulations surrounding manure storage, nutrient management, setbacks, application, and protecting wells, streams, ditches, and other water sources. Farms have to pay attention to where manure goes, when it is applied, how much is applied, and what the conditions are because keeping nutrients and manure out of actual water sources is rather important. The entire purpose of the lagoon is containment. This isn’t a pond that cows have somehow catastrophically ruined. It is manure storage doing exactly what manure storage is supposed to do.
It just happens to photograph remarkably well at sunset.
And maybe that’s worth remembering the next time you’re scrolling through Facebook or Instagram and wondering why everybody else’s life seems prettier, cleaner, easier, happier and considerably more organized than yours. You don’t know what’s outside the frame. You don’t know what happened ten minutes before that picture. You don’t know what they’re worried about, struggling with, crying about, praying about or choosing not to share with several thousand people on the internet. You are seeing the angle they chose, at the moment they chose, with the lighting they chose, and quite possibly after they adjusted the saturation slider just a bit to the right.
Meanwhile, you’re comparing that to your Thursday that you thought was Wednesday.
So maybe don’t.
is full of manure.