A single Android in a sea of iPhones
In multiple group text strings recently, I was thinking how a single Android can mess up a text string in a sea of iPhones.
iPhone users, you know what I mean. The perfectly aligned likes, hearts, and hahas, neatly on top of a comment, turns into a copy and repeat of the commented-upon message, and the entire original message repeats, and it repeats…
Why do I even spend a moment’s thought investigating who the culprit is? Why do I consider this “messed up”?
Am I prejudiced against Android users? Maybe it’s because my mom was a graphic designer and had a big ol’, bright-colored Mac in the home. And I’ve used Apple products all my life, ever since I stopped using my Commodore 64, which was probably half my dad’s salary at the time.
If I look at it more deeply, though, I see a running theme in the life of the human – the comfort we get in being the same.
If everyone around you thinks the way you do and has the same desires, there’s no judgment about your opinion. You won’t be scrutinized. You will not be shunned.
It’s a compromise we make sometimes – being comfortable in exchange for not being special. Special can go the super fantastic way, or it can go the Scarlet A way – labeled as a messed up “other”.
There’s comfort in labels, putting people, including yourself, in boxes.
In the scheme of life, does it really matter if I spend one more second sifting through a liked text? No, not at all.
It can hurt when you’re on the other end of a label, of which you do not want to be labeled – being put into a box of someone else’s notion.
When you’ve changed or grown into a person the people of your past don’t recognize, you can be seen as messy.
Messy is outside the lines. But you know what? There’s enough space in this universe for both inside and outside the lines.
Androids, come and get me! I have room for you.
