4:45 a.m. and I am waking up to my crying baby. In a daze, I nurse her back to sleep and return to bed. It’s Saturday. I don’t want to be awake right now. More importantly, no one needs me to be awake right now. But I remember my friend had texted me from the States, so I decided to quickly write her back since I knew it was daytime there and she would be awake. Ten minutes later I have gone from texting to Instagram to Facebook and am busy updating myself on life in the first world while I lay here in Africa.
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Have you ever been cruising through your day, totally fine, sat down and started scrolling through Facebook, and found yourself suddenly depressed? I wasn’t in a bad mood when I woke up. I was content. Things were fine. Great. But a few pictures and comments later, everything had changed. My day hadn’t even started yet and I was already over it. I had seen a friend who had just completed a half-marathon after having twins and while congratulating her, thought, “She’s hardcore! I wish that was me!” Another friend had turned her personal weight-loss into a fitness coaching career with a new FB page to launch. “Wow, awesome. She’s going for it! I need to do more…” And another friend whose pictures of her kids were so professional and crisp, accompanied by an article on her website. My pictures are all taken on my phone and half of them are blurry.
It was still early and the tide was low, so I decided to walk out my thoughts on the beach (and jog back to compensate for the guilt I was feeling while comparing myself to my super mom friends). It was cloudy and mellow, such a perfect Saturday. Then it hit me. There is so much irony in this. While I am sitting here feeling envious of a friend’s first world lifestyle, feeling a sense of loss at all the potential I could have if I were living there, she might be imagining what her life would be like if she were me, “living the adventure” in Africa, or doing something “bigger” with her life. All because we saw a picture on Instagram, read someone’s FB status, clicked on a link…
There is a fine line between appreciation and depression; inspiration and envy. We can take what we see someone doing with their life, and use it to motivate us in our own, or let it overwhelm us into thinking our lives are somehow less valuable, less wonderful. There is nothing wrong with seeing someone else’s accomplishments and letting them spur you on to keep going, or even change the way you are doing things if it means improvement for a goal. A little challenge here and there is healthy. But it is so hard sometimes to stop yourself from just getting down about your own life when you are constantly comparing it to someone else.
This is why I stopped going on Facebook for a while. I couldn’t handle it anymore. I knew for me, the urge to compare and dwell on what was lacking in my life was poisoning my mind.
They are right when they say comparison is the thief of joy.
This is not a post to advocate for or against using Facebook or any other social media outlet, but rather to step back and recognize how it can affect our minds and moods. And the craziest part of it all is that it all stems from one tiny fragment of someone’s life. It’s not real. It’s only a part of what’s real. People choose what they post online, and the majority of the time, people choose the good stuff. No one has the perfect life, job, house, body, kids, etc. The grass is ALWAYS greener where you water it, and if I spend my days watering the grass in everyone else’s life, my own will turn brown and ugly fast.
So I say, “YAY!” for all my friends’ awesome accomplishments, and “YAY!” for my own. I remind myself daily that life is a learning process, and we are all much too unique to let ourselves get down on each other’s differences. Let us be proud of each other, and proud ourselves. Today I choose to make the most of what I have and say thanks.