Four days ago, I posted my first-ever private WeChat Moment on the account I’ve used since I was five. In nine years, that account had never seen a single post restricted to myself.
The post was about my hopes for my final exam results — really just a rough target score I set for myself. If I failed and the post were public, it would have been embarrassing, even if no one would probably remember it anyway. But after posting it for the first time, I suddenly realized something: I don’t post Moments to be seen by anyone, to build an image, or to perform for anyone. I simply enjoy the feeling of expressing something and sending it out.
Everyone has the urge to express themselves, but where does the pleasure of hitting “send” come from?
I still think it belongs under the desire to express. Sending is part of expression, and an important part at that. Expression is not a one-person activity; it needs both someone putting something out and someone receiving it. In that sense, sending is when expression becomes real — when a thought is pushed outward toward its recipient. In a private Moment, though, the recipient is probably just yourself. The act of sending becomes an outlet for whatever is on your mind. Everything before that — the editing, the drafting, the hesitating — is really just thinking.
Out of pride, out of relationships with others, we often internalize the urge to speak outward. Private expression lets you enjoy the act of expressing, release the pressure of wanting to say something, and still not worry about what anyone else thinks.
I also think this kind of fragmented output is healthy. A lot of emotions grow bigger and more intense because they stay bottled up for too long. If you process them in a streaming way, the risk of overflow is much lower.
I don’t like dragging my negative emotions onto other people, so I usually don’t chat about them either. If there are only two ways I know to really let emotions out, they’re sleep and writing. But both require the right time and place, which isn’t always easy. So maybe posting a few Moments that only I can see, and saying what I really think, is not a bad solution.
The official CCTV News account has a column called "Night Reading," where it publishes pieces meant to soothe, guide, or heal readers emotionally. I’ve noticed that these posts get an unusually high number of private likes.
Night Reading
Maybe that says something: some people work hard to hide what they really feel, partly because they don’t know where to let those emotions out. If they keep it all inside long enough, one day it may all just end up in StackOverflow.