Comparison is the Thief of Joy

I was asked a while back by some followers to address mental health on this blog, and it's taken me forever to write these posts because 1. I'm not exactly sure what topics y'all want me to address and 2. I want to present the best content in the best way possible without being one-sided or insincere. Mental health is such a personal topic to discuss, and everyone experiences something different. Without literally being that person, we will never know how someone else's experiences are different than our own. Not only for mental health issues, but this goes for anything. You cannot experience someone else's life, no matter how much detail they explain it in or how much you think you know about that person.

As we go back to school in the next few weeks, it's important to remember how superficial social media outlets are. We are part of a very unique generation, one that still remembers playing outside on the swings and riding our bikes around the block, but also growing up with technology and having access to a whole Internet of information simultaneously. I remember being one of the last kids I knew to get a desktop computer at home. When I think back, I was only in kindergarten, but it seemed like I was so much older. And frankly, it's crazy to think about that - even though it seems like I still had a whole lifetime of swingsets, kickball games in the backyard, and lots of dirt in my shoes, computers took over my life at a very early age.

The social media outlets that we have at our disposal are arguably the best, and worst, things that can happen to us, particularly as we live through high school and college. I love that I can see photos of my friends from home who go to college hours away, and that my parents, aunts, uncles and cousins can look at my Facebook photo albums and see what I'm up to. But at the same time, I see my friends who go to tailgating schools, and I regret that I won't have that experience at mine. I have the ability to know every date function, party, and social event that I was not asked to attend. And regardless of what my friends' Instagram feed looks like, I will never know if they are adjusting to college life well, if they are homesick, or if they are struggling. We have the very real ability to filter out parts of our lives if we don't want anyone to know about them. And we have the same capability to shove the good times down other people's throats, whether we realize it or not.

No matter how much fun it looks like everyone else is having, remember that we are all real people and we can't have the best day ever all the time. A friend of mine once said that she likes to think of life as a sine wave, and that for each peak of happiness there will also be a dip of sadness of equal magnitude, but that the sine wave continues infinitely and that there is always something else coming up. In the meantime, the most we can do is live in the moment, in our moment, and no one else's. "A flower does not think of competing with the one next to it. It just blooms" - Zen Shin