Last Tuesday I posted “Good morning, everyone! Have a blessed day!” on Facebook. I added a sunrise photograph I had taken from my balcony. I used an emoji—a small yellow sun.
After posting, I stared at my phone for a long time. I had become my father.
The boy who once cringed at every parental post, who rolled his eyes at motivational quotes and sunrise photographs, who swore he would never be that person—that boy had vanished. In his place stood a middle-aged man posting good morning wishes to people he hadn’t spoken to in years.
How did this happen? When did this happen? I cannot point to a single moment. The transformation was gradual, invisible, like hair turning gray. One day you look in the mirror and a different person is there.
I remember when my father joined Facebook. It was 2010. He was excited in a way I found embarrassing. He added everyone—relatives, neighbors, old colleagues, strangers who had mutual friends. He posted constantly. Photographs of food. Updates about the weather. Inspirational quotes with backgrounds of mountains and sunsets.
“Nobody cares what you had for breakfast,” I told him once. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”
He looked hurt but didn’t stop. He continued posting his breakfasts and his sunrises and his quotes about gratitude. His posts received likes from other parents, other uncles and aunties, other people I considered hopelessly uncool.
I was twenty-three then. I knew everything.
Now I am forty-one. I know nothing. Except this: I have become exactly what I mocked.
It started small. I shared a motivational quote once—ironically, I told myself. I was making fun of people who shared such things. But no one knew it was ironic. People liked it sincerely. They commented with heart emojis. And something in me felt good about that.
The next quote was less ironic. The one after that was not ironic at all. I had crossed a line I didn’t even notice crossing.
Then came the food photographs. The first one was a birthday cake—acceptable, I thought. Special occasion. But then I photographed a particularly good biryani at a restaurant. Then a sunset. Then a flower in my garden. Then my morning tea.
My younger cousin commented on the tea photograph: “Okay, uncle.” Just that. Two words. I knew exactly what she meant. I had said similar things to my father.
The circle was completing.
I have thought about why this happens. Why do we all follow the same path? Why do the cool young people of one generation become the cringe-worthy parents of the next?
Part of it is simply caring less. When I was twenty-three, I curated my online presence carefully. Every post was calculated. I wanted to seem interesting, intelligent, appropriately detached. I would never post something earnest. Earnestness was for old people who didn’t understand how the internet worked.
But maintaining that performance is exhausting. As I got older, I had less energy for it. I stopped calculating. I started posting what I actually felt, what I actually saw, what I actually wanted to share. A sunrise made me happy. Why not share it? A meal was delicious. Why not photograph it? I wanted to wish people a good morning. Why not say so?
This is what my father was doing all along. He was not performing. He was just being himself. His posts were not calculated for coolness because he was not trying to be cool. He was trying to connect—simply, directly, without irony.
I mocked this as naivety. Now I understand it as maturity.
The other part is loneliness. As we age, our social circles shrink. Friends move away, get busy, disappear into their own lives. The easy connections of youth—classmates, colleagues, neighbors—become harder to maintain. Social media becomes a way to feel connected to people we no longer see.
When my father posted good morning, he was not performing for an audience. He was reaching out. He was saying: I am here. I am thinking of you. We are still connected, even though we haven’t spoken in years.
I understand this now because I feel it now. When I post that sunrise photograph, I am not showing off my photography skills. I am saying: look at this beautiful thing. I wanted to share it with someone. You are the someone I chose.
This is vulnerable. This is earnest. This is everything I thought was embarrassing when I was young.
My daughter is sixteen. She thinks my posts are cringe. She has told me this directly, with the brutal honesty teenagers specialize in. “Dad, please stop. It’s embarrassing.”
I smile when she says this. I do not stop.
Because I know something she does not know yet. I know that one day she will post a sunrise. One day she will share a quote that moved her. One day she will write “Good morning” to people she hasn’t seen in decades, hoping someone responds, hoping for a small moment of connection in a world that gets lonelier as you age.
She will become me, just as I became my father. The cycle will continue. The cool young people will always mock the earnest old people, and then they will become the earnest old people, and they will be mocked by new cool young people, and so on, forever.
This is not tragedy. This is just how humans work.
We start life trying to be different. We end life realizing we are all the same. The same needs, the same fears, the same desperate desire to connect with other humans before our time runs out.
My father is seventy-four now. He still posts good morning every day. He still shares sunrises and quotes and photographs of his food. His posts get fewer likes than they used to—many of his friends have died or stopped using Facebook. But he continues anyway.
I asked him once why he keeps posting when so few people respond.
He said, “Someone might see it and feel a little less alone. That’s enough.”
I did not understand this when I was twenty-three. I understand it now.
Last week, my daughter saw me taking a photograph of my breakfast. She sighed dramatically. “You’re not going to post that, are you?”
I posted it.
She will understand someday. When she is forty-one and taking photographs of her own breakfast, she will remember this moment. She will realize that her father was not embarrassing himself. He was just being human.
And then she will post her photograph, and her children will roll their eyes, and the circle will complete again.
Good morning, everyone. Have a blessed day.
I mean it.