OBSERVATIONS & OTHER ACCIDENTS

Why withholding has become more radical than revealing.

My partner recently deactivated his Instagram account. Just like that. No announcement, no dramatic farewell, no symbolic last post. He simply disappeared from the grid.

I cannot do the same. Not at the moment. I manage the social media account of a luxury multi-brand store, and I also run this blog’s presence online. For me, Instagram is partly professional infrastructure. It is work. It is communication. It is visibility that serves a purpose beyond the personal.

Still, we found ourselves talking about it one evening — about how much of a luxury it has become, today, to not exist on social media at all. To be unreachable. To live without the subtle hum of an invisible audience.

We found ourselves talking about it one evening — about how much of a luxury it has become, today, to not exist on social media at all.

The conversation stayed with me because I had already written about this very subject for Vogue Portugal — about privacy, exposure, and the erosion of mystery in an age that rewards constant sharing. Yet some themes refuse to remain contained within a printed page. They return, reshaped by lived experience.

There was a time when diaries had locks. I had several. I would finish one, begin another, and when it was complete, I would burn it. Not out of paranoia, but out of instinct. What lived inside those pages was not meant to become archive or evidence. It was process. It was raw and unfinished and entirely mine.

In those notebooks I wrote everything: adolescent longing, intellectual ambition, irrational jealousy, grand reflections, trivial details. Writing was not performance. It was sovereignty. There was no feedback loop, no metrics, no applause. Only silence. Only ownership.

Somewhere along the way, silence became suspect.

We now inhabit a culture in which sharing is framed as openness and withholding as distance. Transparency has become a moral virtue. Privacy, meanwhile, feels almost indulgent — as though keeping parts of ourselves offline requires justification.

But since when did discretion become a flaw?

I have always been drawn to figures who understood the quiet power of reserve. Fernando Pessoa multiplied himself through heteronyms, creating distance between identity and authorship. Emily Dickinson chose seclusion and allowed her poems to breathe without the burden of public persona. J. D. Salinger withdrew from the public eye after the success of The Catcher in the Rye, protecting the integrity of his inner world. None of them confused visibility with depth. None equated exposure with truth.

In October 2023, I deleted Instagram myself. The plan was temporary — a short digital detox. Weeks turned into months. Months turned into nearly a year. What surprised me was not absence, but relief. I did not feel disconnected; I felt reclaimed. Without the quiet pressure to document my existence, experiences regained their texture. Thoughts matured before being articulated. I rediscovered the subtle pleasure of not explaining myself.

Without the quiet pressure to document my existence, experiences regained their texture.

Of course, social media is not inherently destructive. It connects, informs, inspires. But its architecture is built on immediacy and reward. Approval is quantified. Attention is measurable. Identity can become subtly shaped by reaction. Over time, one begins to anticipate perception before fully inhabiting experience. We edit in advance. We curate reflexively.

When everything is visible, what remains sacred?

Keeping a private journal — now elegantly rebranded as “journaling” — remains one of the most radical acts available to us. Writing transforms diffuse emotion into clarity. It reduces anxiety. It reveals patterns that would otherwise remain unconscious. It creates a contained space in which one can be contradictory, uncertain, unpolished. No performance required.

We live in a time when almost every movement leaves a trace: data histories, digital footprints, geolocations, algorithmic memories. The boundary between public and private has grown porous. And yet mystery is not extinct. It survives in choice.

It survives in the dinner that is not photographed. In the conversation that is not summarised. In the relationship that is not publicly narrated. In the emotion that is allowed to unfold privately before it is ever shared — if it is shared at all.

Preserving parts of one’s life is not a rejection of authenticity. On the contrary, it may be its most refined expression. Authenticity does not demand total disclosure; it demands alignment. And alignment sometimes requires silence.

Preserving parts of one’s life is not a rejection of authenticity. On the contrary, it may be its most refined expression.

Perhaps that is what we meant, my partner and I, when we spoke about luxury. Not wealth. Not status. But the ability to remain partially unknowable. The freedom to step away without explanation. The option to exist offline.

As Fernando Pessoa once wrote, “the only mystery is that there are those who think about mystery.” In a world that rewards perpetual visibility, choosing what to protect may be the last true luxury of all.