In life, it can be easy to fall back, get caught up in the little things, and compare your failures to other people’s successes. We often long to find our escape, and make ourselves feel better by living an alternative life online that is the best versions of ourselves. As a result, we have built this idea that a superfluous, extravagant life, is a perfect life. We have forgotten the importance of suffering, and making mistakes and facing challenges that help us grow as people.
Living in a developed country like the United States of America, is a privilege. We have commodities upon commodities to make our lives easier and more comfortable. We have developed gadgets to make mundane, difficult tasks easier with a click of a button. With the world full of luxuries such as convenience and availability, there’s a lot of unrealistic expectations as to what qualifies as a successful and fulfilling life.
We no longer care about being conservative with our possessions and can no longer be satisfied with the latest gadget. There’s always something better. There will always be a better phone, a better car, a better house, a better opportunity. Through this, we have become selfish with our needs and hurting those who may not have as many possessions due to a variety of circumstances.
We seek perfection, we seek beauty, we seek the perfect significant other, we seek the perfect home, the perfect family. Everything must be perfect, because it’s going to be on the internet for everyone to see. We have been uncomfortable with the idea of suffering because it equates to being far off from perfection, from being worthy enough.
We have stopped living for ourselves and have instead developed an audience to constantly broadcast our lives. We live lives that we think other people will like, and we no longer live the lives that we actually enjoy. We are all fooling ourselves with an alter ego that walks around living a perfect life when in reality, that is far from the truth. We are often too afraid to genuinely share the ugly sides of ourselves because that requires a level of vulnerability that we are not willing to express. If we are willing to share We will all continue to compare ourselves to one another until we are all just slightly different variations of one another.
So we continue to seek perfection, but the real question is who are we doing it for?
We have developed several platforms to share with our friends what we are up to, and in the end, we have ironically encountered a new problem with all of this connection.
Being alone.
We all log on to Instagram or Facebook, and we are bombarded with pictures of happy people doing amazing things on their new boat, or they just got their dream job, or they just moved into their first amazing house with their amazing partner, and amazing kids. Happy people in Europe, happy people just looking happy while eating avocado toast that is expertly placed and the cup in the corner turned at the perfect angle. But you just see happy people.
We are then reminded of our own loneliness, I mean, you can’t really be that busy or preoccupied with your life if you’re scrolling mindlessly through Instagram, are you? We are then instantly reminded of our projects that haven’t kicked off yet or the goals and dreams tha we haven’t achieve. We are then reminded that we are just not good enough and we have yet to acheive perfection.
We forget that being uncomfortable, or unhappy is a very natural feeling, and in fact, is required for growth. We did not grow as a society because we were comfortable taking a shit in the ground and covering it up with dirt. We knew that it was uncomfortable so we used that energy in order to find other ways to take a shit that wasn’t as unsanitary.
We are using the ease of convenience and commodity incorrectly by demanding for more and stewing in our own dissatisfaction and suffering. We are so caught up in our own lives and presenting ourselves in a certain way that we have almost forgotten to care about one another and ourselves. We get so caught up in our own dissatisfaction and suffering that we further bury ourselves in the hole and find ourselves battling depression and anxiety. We get so caught up in what we don’t have, that we forget that we are so lucky and privileged to have items that make our lives easier like iPhone’s and a toilet in the bathroom instead of the hole in the ground outside.
Suffering is natural and it is okay, and we should become once again comfortable with life’s discomforts. Being comfortable does not allow us to grow, and who would we be if we weren’t growing as individuals?
MINAH WEBB 