Don’t fall for the Instagram posts and LinkedIn updates — nobody has their shit together!
Ask any veritable adult if they have their shit together. Point blank. Here’s a non-verified statistic, 100% of them will tell you they don’t. If any of them actually end up saying they do, here’s the thing — they either don’t know you well enough or they think acting like they’ve got it together will magically piece the broken pieces of their adult life together.
The reality is murkier, for better and worse. We’re human beings with the most complicated emotional depth possible. We feel and we have opinions on the things that affect our lives. We are capable of abstract thinking. We actually have a wide range of emotions that we are capable of experiencing in one life span.
It’s nearly impossible for us to be emotionless, no matter how hard we try. This is exactly why having ‘perfect’ lives or having ‘our shit together’ isn’t just paradoxical to our existence as humans, but also simply unrealistic and detrimental.
This need that we are indoctrinated with to be the best versions of ourselves from early adulthood turns into toxic mindsets as we grow up. It starts with the thousands of societal expectations we feel pressured to fulfill, to the modern societal wonder — social media.
Every single day on our infinite scrolling spree, our Instagram feeds convince us that our lives will never be enough, no matter how hard we try. Our LinkedIn profile will only be satisfied when it is exploding with achievements and long yet pretentious descriptors of all the work we seem to be doing.
What we fail to realize is that social media is just that — it’s media.
It’s being curated by our own hands every single day. You can be anything you want on social media because it has managed to make all of us content creators and producers. It’s boosted our creativity to an unfathomable level, not all of it for good reason. (Think catfishing…)
We create our own reality on social media. It’s time we acknowledge this and stop putting ridiculous amounts of pressure on ourselves to be perfect all the time.
Perfection is highly overrated. Perfectionism is the bug that eats you alive while you strive to live a life beyond the one you’re actually in. Don’t let it. This comes from someone who spent a huge proportion of her teenage and early adulthood being caught up in perfectionist tendencies, trying to be ‘the best’ possible version of oneself. Yet all along, not knowing what this best possible version even was and why I was aspiring to live up to it.
Your life isn’t quantified by the number of updates you choose to share/don’t share on social media. Your life isn’t reduced to the number of followers you have or likes you get.
Social media thrives on this and that’s okay. Your worth shouldn’t thrive on this, that’s definitely not okay.
It took me quite some time to adjust to having a Wabi-Sabi mentality and really adopting it in everything I do — work, leisure, passions, life decisions. I still struggle with it sometimes and that’s acceptable. Change never comes overnight.
Functioning adults lead varied, diverse life experiences, all of which lead us to become the persons we are or wish to be. Some people realize their own personal mission statement a lot earlier than others, some don’t. Some people realize they don’t need or want a mission statement to live by. It’s all okay.
It takes a while for some of us to internalize the simple fact that you cannot possibly be happy or satisfied every single day and managing your finances is quite possibly the most mundane yet satisfying task you’ll ever do. But, here’s the catch — we all get there. Sooner or later, we do.
Being an adult isn’t easy, especially not in the current socio-political or natural climate we are in. Things aren’t okay but we, millennials, sure are. We’re the most culturally sensitive and war-opposed generation ever. We’re also hardworking as hell, mostly because we weren’t given a choice in the matter.
Let’s embrace that and try to thrive, instead of trying to merely survive every day. We all have our demons, Instagram and LinkedIn are a way to hide them and seem ‘put-together’ which is okay because it helps some of us cope too. Let Instagram and LinkedIn be what they are — media platforms. Let’s realize that reality lies outside these applications that seem to be absorbing and mutilating the idea of our own self-worth.
