I got a kind note from Ann today, one of those oblique and sometimes vague Facebook messages that come to me almost every day from strangers. They remind me that some people think of me as a celebrity, an idea that shocks me every time I come across it.

I am rarely on Facebook and even more rarely on Facebook Messenger – way too many junk messages or presumptuous ones that say things like “hi, how are you?” Don’t most people work?

I don’t read most of these messages – I can’t imagine anyone has time to do that – and don’t always even see them. Some of them sit there for weeks before I think of going through them.

I get irritated sometimes when I see that so many of the messages are really about nothing much in particular. How would anyone answer them?

Some are both nice and thoughtful.

One of the ones that came in this morning came in from somebody I would call a fan, her name was Anne.

She said she read all of my books and came to see me speak at a library somewhere in New York State some years ago; she said I brought Red with me.

The message was simple and straightforward…She said she loved talking to Maria and me. “You are living the dream,” she said, and that was the end of the message.

I wondered why Anne took the time to send me that message and what she wanted me to take from it.

It seemed like a melancholic message to me. I always find it somewhat sad when people tell me I am living their dream or that I have a perfect life; it suggests unhappiness and yearning to me. And of course, there is no such thing as a perfect life or a life that is a dream.

It’s a stereotype, for sure, and perhaps an unfair one, but I see Anne as lonely and looking for meaning in her life. She somehow sees things in my life that I don’t see.

There is nothing dreamy about my life; it is real in every sense of the word.

I’ve gotten a lot of massages over the years, and I’m pretty good at sensing the spirit behind them. Some are astonishingly thoughtful and interesting, some are empty, seemingly sent out of loneliness or emptiness.

Some people just want to make human contact, I have responded to many of those.

Speaking for myself, I can’t imagine sending a message to a stranger telling him or her that they were “living the dream.” On top of that, how could I possibly know the depth or range of a stranger’s life from reading Facebook?

Facebook promotes the idea that we are all friends, but a Facebook message does not constitute or guarantee a friendship, or even a message, no matter what Mark Zuckerberg says.

Countless studies have found that most Facebook posters dress up their lives in a favorable but unauthentic way; most people are reluctant, to be honest, or open in such a public way. I can well understand that also.

I am a freak, I do openness for a living and it is a good thing for me to do, but I am very wary of making myself look good or being unthinkingly self-serving. That isn’t the point of writing.

My idea is to share my flaws as well as my successes. Good writing is about authenticity, not fantasy.

I don’t know Anne, and I could be wrong about her. I hope she is happy.  She got me to thinking about the term “living the dream.”

I see that it’s meaning has changed a lot in recent years; Anne may not know that.

The general dictionary meaning to “having a seemingly-perfect life: Often applies to movie stars and other celebrities…”

Quora, an online language and question and answer site edited by online users, says of the term: “it refers to the modern take on the old expression “the American Dream,” which is used to convey what every American family was once believed to be trying to achieve – spouse, kids, two cars, the house in the suburbs.

According to the hip and snarky Urban Dictionary – the most popular definition online of the term, according to Google is  – “the phrase has evolved and is now most often used ironically [the way I’ve heard it], usually when one person hates their life and would like to kill themselves rather than live another day…”

In the movies, I’ve heard superheroes answer, “oh, I’m living the dream” when asked if they are okay after a ferocious and bloody battle with monsters that left them scarred and exhausted.

Well, I am no superhero, no Hollywood celebrity, and no superhero either. I want to tell you gently and with appreciation, that Maria and I are not living any dream. Nor do we have any perfect life or want one. How empty that would be.

I’ve always learned much more from heartbreak and disappointment than from success or wealth.

What I most like to convey isn’t that we are different from everybody, but the truth is, we are very much the same as other people. Life is the original monster roller coaster, ups and downs, ups and downs.

Like most of the people reading this, we worry about taxes and bills, health care and home maintenance, we have our arguments and share of misfortunes, accidents, and disappointments, we suffer pain and experience joy just like you, Anne, and almost all of the people reading this.

Thomas Merton wrote my favorite answer about identity:

“If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live or what I like to ask me eat…but what I am living for, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.”

I’d say in response to a message like Anne’s: “Thank you so much for writing me, I’d prefer if you didn’t tell me how I live, but ask me if I am living fully and with meaning.”

That sounds right to me. That’s a message I love to answer.