3 Lessons in Taormina and How Facebook is Worse Than Crack

The symbol of Taormina, half bull half woman.

 “It’s not the places you’ll remember, it’s that conversations you had at the cousin’s girlfriend’s dad’s pub.”

Last night I had a choice. I could go have dinner with another family or I could take a road trip to Taormina with my friend, Anthony and some of his friends. I have been wanting to go to Taormina and between the two busses it would take to get there to the idea of traveling solo and they said we could reschedule the dinner so I decided that it would be way more fun to go with a group, especially one I already knew.

On the phone, I finally answered Anthony, “When in Roma!” Okay, so we weren’t in Rome, we were in Taormina, which by the way is a beautiful little Harry Potter town at night. But it was still way better going in a group than solo.

It’s the whole concept of, is life about the experience or the people? To me, I think people make an experience.

This has come up a lot in my life, with one of my friends in particular who would always say, “Wow, that’s such a great experience,” or “okay, let’s do it, it’s an experience,” and I started to feel that he only wanted to go on adventures with me because I would, and because it was “an experience,” whereas to me it was more important to become closer to my friends and doing cool things was just another way of connecting with them.

With that being said, Taormina was awesome because of the group I was with. We started with what was deemed the “best cannoli’s in the world,” to going somewhere for our “before dinner,” where we had coffee and hot chocolate and ended up on some random Reality TV Show for an island off the coast of Sicily, to it now being “dinner time” – aka 9pm where we went to a fine-dining restaurant to have our-priced chicken salads to satisfy our need for something other than pasta and cheese.

(Pasta and cheese by the way, is always a good idea.)

Outlook from Taormina

Reminds me of photos I’ve seen from England

“Hot Chocolate”- like a bitter cup of chocolate that a little kid didn’t add enough water too… they also add sugar to it!

We realized that our international bunch- Italians, Australian, American and Thailander all could speak English more than we even knew and we started having more in-depth conversations past the whole- I love ricotta and what are Italian boys really like? To our philosophy on the strategic maneuvers guys use to pursue girls and how Facebook is a more powerful drug than crack or cocaine to the speed in which our physical and mental bodies move on Earth causes us to always be physically living in the past.

Although we all came from different parts of the world, with different backgrounds and different concepts of right and wrong, we all agreed on some general enlightening principles that I thought I would share….

3 Concepts Agreed by People from 4 Different Countries.

1. Facebook Messes with a Realistic Sense of Time and Space

From the outside, Micky looks like a tough guy you don’t want to mess with, but on the inside, a big teddy bear who drinks espressos from tiny cups.

We all decided that Facebook truly messes with real time and creates a false reality that becomes an addictive pursuit if not used properly (which most people don’t.)

“The problem with Facebook is that you always want to be in more than one place at the same time,” Anthony said. I find this entirely true. One minute you wish you were backpacking in the Phillipines with your best friend, the next minute you are questioning whether you should be getting married and having kids because that’s what the kids from college are doing.

With wanting to get so many “likes” and checking their phones before, during and after they are doing something- it has become a DRUG. Traveling without Facebook has been the best thing ever, but after 10 days I started to realize that my new friends could only communicate with me through Facebook and they now wanted to see their own photos, so it became apparent to me that

Facebook is not evil, and when used for its original intention, can bring you closer to people. The problem is that instead of using it to become closer to people, we are using it to build some false “audience” almost like a promotional campaign that makes us “feel” closer to vast amounts of people, brings us no closer to the people closer to us and in turn makes us feel no more social than we were.

We examined a few different people and decided the most unhappy people on Facebook are the ones that are constantly posting things on Facebook.

However, this doesn’t mean that those who don’t post things on Facebook aren’t addicted to Facebook. I have one friend that never posts anything at all, but she is constantly checking it to see what her friends are doing. So don’t think you are flying high by never posting anything- but just don’t let it control you as a whole.

It still happened, even if you didn’t put it on Facebook. And it still happened even if you only got “3 Likes” for it.

Without having a reliable phone here, Facebook has been our way of making plans, or giving each other photos that we would otherwise not have seen. It is also a way to share this blog of the insights.

3. A Lesson from the Dalai Lama

Caterina and her own street 🙂

Dalai Lama XIV

“Man surprised me most about humanity.Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money.Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health.And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

We are constantly worrying about the future so we are never actually living in the present and once we get to the “future” we are worrying about the past and how we were just not living in the present- essentially we are in a constant state of worry and never actually achieving anything and never actually happy.

3. A Picture is Not Worth a Thousand Words Anymore…but it can be.

A Reality TV Show from Malta filming and singing Bruno Mars to us 🙂

I love photos, anyone will know that. I constantly have my camera on me, taking photos and video, but I was thinking about something crucial.

We are capturing photos to capture a moment in time, a memory, not to create a memory. I saw a friend write the other day that he is sick of “creating memories” from his photos. If you are setting something up to look like something else that never actually happened, then that memory essentially doesn’t exist, just the memory of you setting it up.

If something is so staged and falsified, I wonder, if a picture is worth a thousand words, than what do those words actually say?

I love photos and when used properly, I think can provide a great memory and create a picture for others as well, again, it’s all about the way we use technology. Take photos for you and for the people who are with you. Take them to remember things. Take them to capture REAL moments. Take them to paint a full picture. 

To be able all communicate was a gift and a true example of how language is powerful in understanding others and the world around us. This is another reason why teaching English right now is so important to why I am in Italy.

When we got back to Siracusa, we ended the night at a place in Ortigia and prancing around the streets singing “Wrecking Ball” – which I’ve officially deemed as the song of the trip.

Do I remember the name of the streets in Toarmina or where we got the best cannolis in the world? No, but I do remember our theories from the Dahli Lama and how much Mona loves her dolce, and that is good enough of a memory for me.

xoxo