It’s two days before my 32nd birthday and I’m sitting in bed doing what I can only assume most people do around their birthdays after the age of 30. I’m thinking about the past year and about life in general and deciding if where I’m at is good enough for my age. I go through a checklist of items – how’s my career, my finances, my health, my looks, my social life, my love life, etc etc etc. I stop, scroll through Instagram and I’m inundated with babies, engagements, weddings, new jobs, great abs, fancy trips, home-owners, and all the other accomplishments everyone else is showing off and I compare myself. Am I doing enough? Does my life look good enough? Is my highlight reel up to par? And I don’t do this from a place of insecurity. Rather, I do this because it’s impossible not to. We fill our brains for hours a day (literally, you should see my Instagram screen time – it’s embarrassing) with false advertising, believing the fairy tales others project. In reality, we’re all going through something real, all the time.
Just last week a college friend of mine took his life after a long battle with mental illness. I spent the day in and out of tears, knowing that I’d had an opportunity to say something real and meaningful to him just a few days prior and I missed it. Instead, what did I do? I looked at who he had friended on his new Facebook account other than me. It breaks my heart to know that I could have brought a smile to his face for a moment, even if the end result would have been the same. I wish I could have alleviated his pain or distracted him a split second in the midst of what I can only assume was a whirlwind of mental anguish. Before this, I never understood when people would say “life is short” because honestly – this whole ordeal can feel long as fuck. But now I get it. He’s gone, and I missed my chance to say any decent last words to him. Kev, if you’re bored up there and reading my blog – I’m sorry.
I think we all get so caught up in this external facade of what we think our lives should look like that we forget to stop and enjoy the moments and be grateful for what we do have. Social media has turned us into appearance monsters. I know a lot of people who are already thinking about the picture they want to take at an event before they even get to the event. Shit, they might even have the caption ready to go. Or even worse – they may even be going for the sole purpose of posting a “cool” photo (see: Veuve Cliquot Polo Classic – you’re lying if any of you ever watched a Polo match before this). We get so wrapped up in appearances that we don’t notice what’s going on right in front of us.
Recently I went on a trip with a group of girls and I kid you not, I’d say about 60-70% of the time was spent either 1. Taking & editing photos, 2. Posting photos/stories/snaps or 3. FaceTiming someone who wasn’t in this foreign country with us. One girl’s Instagram story had to literally be an hour long (that’s 240 15 second clips). Mind you – we travelled a 14 hour day to get to a beautiful, tropical country and spent a lot of money for a sick ass house to stay in. Not once did we sit together and enjoy the house without our phones. Not once did we sit and talk and play cards or enjoy each other’s company like I’ve done on every other similar trip I’d been on in the past. I can’t tell you how disappointing and eye-opening this experience was for me. Most of the girls were a few years younger than me and I realized that this is just the new world order. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE a bomb photo as much as the next girl, but that’s never going to be so important to me that I lose sight of what life is really about.
If we just sit back and passively absorb the world around us through pictures, comments, videos and likes, we become shells of ourselves. Our relationships become increasingly more shallow. Our happiness relies more and more on feedback and approval from others. This is a sickness. It’s an addiction. I think we all need to put down our phones and look at each other in the eye. Let’s have real conversations again. When you’re upset with a friend, TELL THEM. Don’t just stop commenting and liking their photos or take hours to respond. When you love someone, TELL THEM. Don’t just assume they know. When someone reaches out to you and says something crazy, remember that everyone is going through something we know nothing about and show a little compassion. You never know when the opportunity to communicate with them might be taken away. And most importantly – remember that there’s two sides to every situation, photo, comment, like, and post. On one side, there’s the outward action/appearance, but on the other side, there’s the true sentiment. What matters is the sentiment, and the only way to understand that is to share it in a medium other than social media.
To quote Jim Jefferies – I think we can all do better.
Very well written article. I couldn’t agree more.