Life is but an experience to be savored and reflected upon. Learning from an experience is just as important as being in it. This is what I learned this summer while I was collaborating on a Big Brother blog.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the show, Big Brother is a reality show produced around a group of people who are essentially cut off from the outside world as they compete in and undergo several forms of physical and mental challenges for the chance of winning half a million dollars. The fact that they willingly participate in this emotional soup of human adversity is quite astounding; but the fact that millions of us choose to witness this on a daily basis through the live feeds, is even more so.
This reality show is truly a human experiment; but it is not one only centered around the house participants; it very much so includes all the fans who develop very real attachments to the people in the house. For over two months, we not only witness the extreme highs and lows of human nature in the house, we hop on to that roller coaster ourselves. Fans develop very real attachments to the players; attachments that prompt friendships, online families and fan pages; attachments, that often prompt debates, arguments, even online hate pages.
As a transcriber of the live feeds, a moderator of fan comments, and a participant in online communications centered around the show, I have witnessed moments of incredible humanity and tenderness, as well as those of horrific hatred and cruelty not only in the house, but outside it as well. People can, in one moment, display such joy at someone's success or compassion for someone's loss or misfortune, while in the next moment, voice sentiments of such hatred, that it would make my jaw lock in horror.
What I will take away from this experience, is not only knowledge about people in general, but about myself. With every experience, I learn what I can and will not subject myself to; what I want to have in my life and what I don't. I have made some good friendships with people that I truly care for and will keep in my life; and as the house guests leave the Big Brother house, winners or not, better from the experience or not, having gotten past the pettiness that this experience can engender or not, I exit the summer, knowing that I embrace all the beauty of human nature, while feeling an incredible sadness for its underbelly.
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