Imagine a 9-year-old Christian: crooked teeth, untamable curls, just the right amount of freckles from playing in the sun, and a curious mind. I was already a lovesick puppy at this young age. You can't blame me: Every Disney story I ever watched had some element of love and happily ever after. So when I was at a Jerry's Deli in Santa Monica, California, and saw a man and woman in their late 20s, presumably on a date, sit together at a cozy table in the corner of the restaurant, I was intrigued.

I had first-row seats to what was to come in the department of love, and here is what I saw: two people, the woman in a dress, the man more casual in jeans and a T-shirt, their eyes glued to their phones. Was this really what I had to look forward to? I decided to give it a few more minutes, as in the whole time I was at dinner. I figured when their food came, things would be different, but no. There was no "thank you" to the waiter, no "this looks great"; just silence.

The only thing that would have made this situation worse is if food porn was a thing. I looked down into my split pea soup – yes, I was and still am an odd one – and felt disappointed. Disney had lied, every TV show had lied, the world was a liar. I remember my mom and her boyfriend looking at the same table and joking how that is our future – connected by technology, and torn apart by it.

And here we are today. I have more Facebook friends than genuine friends; the whole world can know where I am and what I am doing at any given moment; sexting is a normal thing, and people get paid to post on Instagram. If Disney made a modern fairytale, it would consist of a woman and a man meeting on some dating app, flirting for about a month, having casual sex, and on to the next. If you want to find out if someone is interested in you, all you have to do is see if they like your latest Instagram selfie or Facebook profile picture. Those very pictures that you most likely edited using three different photo "perfection" apps and asked four different friends which filter looked better.

We are not living a life true to ourselves. We are living a life lacking emotional connections with not only others, but ourselves. Which brings me to The Mirror Stage.

It all begins with Jaques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst very much influenced by Freud. He believed that "an infant recognizes herself as a mirror in a whole entity instead of the fragmented movements and undefined boundaries between self and other (aka baby and mom) that have made up her world, thus far" (Anderson & Hulsether 1).

Are you still with me, because here comes the relevance-to-society-today part.

So, the infant desires to see herself as an "I" or a "perfect self," but the mirror cannot produce her perfect image, but rather a flipped one, thus creating a "permanent sense of being imperfect, but looking forward to perfection" (Anderson & Hulsether 1). Think of this as the front view of your camera, that awful moment when your camera is flipped on you, unintentionally, and you scream, "Ah, is that how I actually look right now?" Then you flip the camera and someone takes a photo of you and you are satisfied because that's how you actually look; the other view was just a bad angle.

However, you will never know how you actually look, because of Lacan's theory and our constant desire to reach perfection. So we project our ideal self, with the help of social media. You know that one friend on Facebook who looks like they are having the time of their life, every night? They post vacation photos, accomplishments, seemingly flawless profile pictures; that is their ideal self -- who you think they are and who they want to be.

Will we ever recognize our true selves, have actual relationships with emotional connections, or truly love others and ourselves? I don't have the answers, but I do know how we can start. Reduce your time on social media and other technologies. Have conversations with strangers on the train, listen to music with people, read something interesting and share your knowledge with others, debate, forget the word perfection, and live your life.

Sources: Anderson, Misty, and Mark Hulsether. "English 486/University Studies 420: Critical Approaches to Race, Class, and Gender." Web.