Social sites have conditioned many of us to believe that what we see portrayed on media is someone's actual life. It's teaching us that nobody ever goes through anything, when in actuality everybody goes through stuff. No one is exempt from "shxt happens." What we see is only one snippet to a complex story. Let's first understand that you could never capture someone's entire life on a social feed. Nope, can't do it. Impossible! Social feeds are like viewing a beautiful, well titled and illustrated front cover (not even the back cover) to a 5 million, 100 thousand and 62 page book. How could you ever possibly know what's going on in the books content just by reading the title and viewing the cover?
People share what they want us to know and usually they want us to know that everything is going well, that things are just fine, they've got all the answers to everything and they've got this journey in the bag! Of course every single day is a flipping sunny one, it never rains in southern California, the peaches always grow real sweet in Georgia, and the oranges never ever get moldy in Florida. Dude, seriously?
We have to make a conscious effort to understand that what we see on these social sites is a high light reel, spot lighting all the beautiful moments where nothing goes wrong and everything goes as planned. By no means am I saying anything is wrong with this (I find it special that people enjoy sharing parts of their lives with others, plus I really don't wish to read or see posts about drama or any other low vibration unless you are soliciting love and light to get in a better mind space). Essentially, what I am saying is we should always remember that we are all human beings and no matter how golden and glittery someone's life looks on social media, they go through things just like the next person, just like you do too. Don't find yourself comparing, talking yourself out of your greatness and your own dreams because you are too focused on what someone else is doing to realize what you are capable of! We are all living, loving and walking the "learn & grow" as L. Hill says.
Reminding ourselves that every human being on this planet is fighting a battle that is completely invisible to us, allows us to feel a great deal of compassion for humanity as a whole. If we all worked on judging less, and loving more, what would we be capable of? Maybe this is just me and my fanciful hopes and chimeras, hoping one day I'll be sitting around a camp fire making s'mores, singing kumbaya with the very people wasting energy disliking me (no that wasn't a dig, I'm just being real). But I digress, as thats a bit off topic.
I say all of this to say, recognize the highlight reels for what they are. Celebrate the highlights of someone else's life all the same as you want them to celebrate yours. Just don't get caught up in making assumptions and allowing these assumptions to make you feel like your life is not good enough because it's imperfect. Your life is YOUR life and God gave it to you for you to live it, not to squander it trying to get someone else's.
Be love, be light, be life conscious!
Xo,
Shina