Let’s all rejoice together that Friday is finally here. It’s now the weekend and we can all finally relax. I actually was just thinking about how a couple of years ago in college, my weekend would start on Thursday night instead of Friday. Ah the good ole college days were so fun. Somehow I made sure that every semester I never had a Friday class. 8 semesters, no Friday classes- it was so great which meant after I was done with classes on Friday, my weekend began (even though some of my internships were on Fridays) on Thursday and carried on throughout Sunday. What I would give to get one of those weekends back! Anyways, back to what I was planning on talking about in this blog post, basically a dreaded word…. comparison.
“Comparison is the thief of joy”
-Theodore Roosevelt
I don’t know about y’all but personally, I have always struggled with comparing myself. Not that it’s a daily feeling but I think it comes in seasons. Throughout various seasons in my life, I have caught myself feeling less than and comparing my life/feelings/scenario to others. Not even necessarily others I know, perhaps complete strangers but nonetheless, others who were not living my life. While I knew it probably wasn’t the best decision to be doing, I felt like I almost couldn’t help it. In today’s society with social media running our lives and now being isolated (safely and rightfully so, of course, because of the pandemic), it’s almost easier to compare our lives to others on the internet. This is a dangerous slippery slope to go down because as we all know, on any social media platform, it is very easy to get sucked into the black hole and start comparing and rethinking our own lives when in reality, we don’t truly know what’s going on behind the other person’s screen. In the same regard, others don’t know what is going on with us behind the screen because while technology is so useful and has brought such advancement to our lives, there is a slight negative side of it where some can rely on it so much or it be our only sense of reality, which would be a false one.
I can easily scroll through instagram and find a few accounts that I easily go down a rabbit hole on. Oh her hair looks so pretty, I wonder why mine doesn’t do that. Oh they must be so smart because they invested in blah blah, I could never understand that stuff. Oh she must not even have bad days because she’s always smiling and laughing… y’all get the point. It’s just so easy to play the comparison game especially with how our society functions these days. However, as we’ve explored, comparison can be a true root of evil. If we are constantly thinking of what other people have/don’t have, or what others lives must be like/or not like then how can we ever find peace and happiness in our own? “Real life”and some authenticity sometimes can lack on social media… instagram is definitely a highlight reel but that doesn’t meant that real life (whether it happens to you or others) doesn’t exist because it’s not posted about. On the contrary, “real life” happens everyday, its the way we choose to control our own emotions and handle the situation that really matters in the end.
In the past year, I will admit that I have compared my life or my story to others but in truth, I’ve made a conscious effort in the past months to understand why I start to have those thoughts when they arise and how to swiftly move away from them. Particularly during the past two years while navigating my post-grad life. My friends and I are all living very different lives now and in some ways it feels like I try to “catch up” or get to where I “should” be by x amount of months I’ve graduated from. In reality, those are all time constraints and expectations that we put on ourselves, we don’t actually have to listen to them. There really is no reason for me to compare because no one’s life/decisions/objects/feelings are going to be like mine because they are not me and I am not them. We all live individual lives and have our own experiences that are unique to us… and no one can ever take that away. Finding solace in the fact that no one else is living my life has helped me transition out of that toxic comparison mentality recently because if I can live my life confidently and in my own way (mistakes and all) then it’s my story to tell. I get to write the beginning, middle, and end….. with the help of the big guy upstairs of course. 🌈
If you are reading this and finding yourself agreeing with a lot of what I have said, then at least you can now realize you’re definitely not alone. It’s not just like there’s a cure either to just magically stop yourself from comparing things but I hope that with some conscious thinking, it will keep on becoming minimal in my life. I have also been trying to find the everyday joys. This counteracts the comparison game quite heavily. I’ve always been decent at finding a silver lining in situations but taking the time everyday to intentionally be grateful or joyful about something, big or small, takes WORK. Anyways, I hope you all have a great weekend and truly can find joy in all of your special, unique, and custom created lives. Oh, and Happy Mother’s Day weekend!💐 For those of you who find Mother’s Day challenging for whichever reason, I will be thinking of you. Thanks for reading along🤍
XOXO
–Sara💋
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*All thoughts and opinions in this post are my own. Pictures of myself belong to me.
Sara Elise 