I ’M nobody! Who are you?
~Emily Dickinson
Are you nobody, too?
Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They ’d banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
I love this poem. I’ve known this one for years–it’s one that frequently gets anthologized in middle school English textbooks. I’ve always found it charming and quirky. “How public, like a frog” I find particularly amusing.
As with all good poems, the meanings and nuances of this one have deepened and grown richer for me over years. Reading this as a middle schooler, I was convinced it was about the joy of finding the other weirdos. I still think it is, and now I see more in it, too. As an adult, I read this poem as deeply counter-cultural.
Dickinson wasn’t writing in an age of social media, but this poem seems prescient. When I read it as an adult, I can’t help but think of all the people I know of who broadcast their every life event over the interwebs. From the rare and wondrous, like the birth of a child, to the mundane, like hanging out in a backyard with the people you always hang out with, so many people put so much on social media in the search to “be somebody.”
I feel like a curmudgeon. I don’t post pictures of my children because I feel strongly that they ought to have the same opportunities I’ve had to control their own social media presences. I can’t help but feel a little FOMO when other people are posting pictures of their beautiful kiddos and everyone is exclaiming over them. But in the end, the frog-publicity just doesn’t feel right for me and my children.
Maybe I’m a holdout. Maybe I’m on the wrong end of history here. But I know my children, and I want to respect what they want. I want them to be able to say, “What’s out there for public consumption is something I control.” In an age when it feels that our autonomy is subsumed by systems and even a waiver for a kid to go play at a gym includes a clause stating that the company gets to use their image for promotional purposes from now until forever, I want my kids to feel that they have some say. I want them to understand the value of privacy.
So I’m still one of the weirdos. There’s always the temptation to be public like a frog, to win the admiration of the bog–but in the end, that’s all it is–bog admiration. You can get bogged down in it. You can forget what’s important. You can lose yourself.
I would rather be one of the weirdos.
The Emily Project 