Do you feel the pull of never enough? Never enough time, sleep, money, sex, work, beauty, patience, success, exercise, healthy choices and on and on. Do you feel like no matter what you do, it’s never good enough? Do you feel that you are juggling so many balls — parent, student, wife, partner, care giver, housekeeper, teacher, mentor, bread winner, musician, professional — so that every hat you wear seems to fall short of what you would like to be able to deliver? That you are living constant iterations, examples and demonstrations of running on the treadmill of never enough?
Our world has changed so much. Never in our history have we had so much connection with our immediate and not so immediate communities. Never before have we been able to share our life with the world, at the click of a finger. We have moved into a whole new way of interacting with our global community, and we are just at the infancy of this new era. We are the guinea pigs. No one in our history is able to teach us how to navigate these unfamiliar waters. It is hard to fully understand how this will define our culture and our future as humans.
We have become attached to small computers that update us day and night on what is happening in everyone else’s lives. We are inundated with images of how amazing everyone else’s life is, seeing successes displayed endlessly. An over-indulgence of selfies and narcissistic behavior which encourages more self-indulgent behavior. I am not saying that as an attack, I am saying it as an observer of the changes I’ve seen in our world.
With these constant social affronts, we judge more and more. We judge others and their choices. We decide that what we are seeing means they are so much better than us, that their lives are so much better because they have more money, more freedom to play, the luxury of travel, more reasons to be loved. It feels like whatever we are doing is not enough to keep up with everyone else’s excellent lives.
What if you choose to hold back from showing the world your life? Do you feel like you will disappear into the great unknown, that somehow you will be forgotten? That you’ll be unliked? That your life won’t matter? What would happen if you were able to pull back on the self-judgement? Would it mean you would judge others less? Feel more balanced in your own life? In my experience, the answer is yes.
The problems arise when we live without examining our behavior or reactions to what we are seeing. An unexamined life leads to behaviors that lack social and moral consciousnesses. We jump almost blindly onto social media as a form of self-punishment. You know you’ll turn it off feeling a little less whole than when you opened it, but you indulge nonetheless. It’s destructive. And exhausting. So why do we do it??
When someone posts something that’s cringe worthy, It’s like a car accident: we can’t help but gawk. You want to look away, but you can’t seem to. It’s easy to jump into the idea that in order to be liked, we need to post more, show more, but this leaves us feeling less and less connected to what truly matters to us. How do we navigate the seas of not pretty enough, not loved enough, not enough money, not enough patience? Moving from this place, we cannot help but lack appreciation and gratitude for all the gifts we already have.
Yet we have opportunity in the unknown. We can direct our outcomes. There is hope. We can dream up where we want to go, how we want to relate to and in this world and how we want to teach our children how to interact and respond to the endless stimulation.
I believe the answers lay in the questions we ask. What do you want for your future? What relationships do you want to nourish? How do you want to connect to your community? How do you want to feel? What skills do you want to equip your children with? Not technical skills, but emotional skills. How do you want to influence the future with your actions, not for fame but for emotional well-being?
wholehearted love
Noelle