Thursday Thoughts: A Lot More Personal

When my best friend from childhood Sophia and I were younger, we used to drive around town and get dinner on Friday nights. It was a time honored tradition and how I spent most of high school weekends, to be honest. One of our favorite past times was observing other people and making up stories about their lives- what they did, why they were at the same restaurant as us and interpret their interactions of the person they were with. It was our own anthropology experiment that was not only fun, but gave us the idea that through observation and little actual interaction, we could piece together someone that in reality, was a total stranger. 

Social media is something that I often find myself at odds with. On one hand, I enjoy the interaction with people, the ability to share what I love and the constant stream of having something to do (a love that elders in my life will never understand). There is additionally, a strange aspect that I have tried to describe to my parents. This usually involves knowing something about a classmate or friend from home and them asking how I found about about said event. I tend to respond with the same comment: "I saw it online." We don't really interact with most of the people on our newsfeed regularly, but because we know so much about them, it gives us a false sense that we do, and usually makes us paint them in an inaccurate, unrealistic light. I think the phrase "don't meet your heroes" was made for the digital age. Expectations are the true root of evil and and we have to stop putting people on a pedestal. We do it with everyone. From friends that we compare our lives to, celebrities, boys we're interested in, I find myself using that skill of reading people to imagine them in a specific way and it's terribly unhealthy. I've definitely met enough "perfect people" in this world to understand that all of us have our own demons, no matter how much we try to pretend. 

My mom likes to remind me to not be so open about everything in my life, but it's something that has been a  part of me and probably always will be. It makes for some very challenging and occasionally heartbreaking situations, but it's something that I probably will never change. One of the reasons we find the internet so appealing is for its ability to make us feel less alone. 

Despite the fact that it nearly goes against everything I mentioned above, I wanted to state this as a friendly reminder that whether you are a friend, acquaintance or stranger, you are not alone in feeling a little lost- maybe more than you'd like to admit. I like to consider myself a pretty optimistic person, but the other day after riding a wave of a particularly good month, I found myself staring at the shower head in my bathroom. Literally for 10 minutes, I just stood there, with no sense of what I was doing or need to dry off. It was a crappy end to a crappy day, and I imagine that many people understand that feeling. The benefit of these experiences is that they make good days more appreciated. In difficult moments, I try to remember that we have more control over how we feel than we think. We all screw up in our own ways and find ourself staring at the shower head from time to time. It's what we do after we get out, dry off and move on that really counts. {image one // two}