When you open up any social media platform, you rarely come across posts that show vulnerability or the lows of life. And when you do come across that once in a blue moon post, we all feel bad for 10 minutes and move on or we think that it’s clickbait especially when influencers/verified folks do it. We share our highs but go through our lows alone. Somehow over time, the fear of failure became a big lump in our throats. It’s always there and it gets inflamed whenever we scroll. Now it’s like you either hustle, catch up fast and ignore burnout, or you sit in misery. Those are your three options. It’s like there is a perfect box and you have to make and shave yourself to fit into it otherwise it’s the end. But why are we fitting into the box instead of building our own box?

For the longest time, I had a set of checkpoints that I had to check off and I was scared of failure and I still am to a certain extent. But now I use that fear to motivate me and to drive me to be better but for me not for others, not to prove to others. I wanted to be the best and control everything to make sure I followed the straight line but we all know that life isn’t a straight line and things change a lot as time passes by. We go through certain experiences, we make certain choices, or we have to forego something, we compromise, we have to wait sometimes, and all of us don’t have the same resources or interpretations. That’s the other thing, you and I could go through the same event right now and we’d both still have different takeaways. But that doesn’t mean that only one of us is wrong or right.

I used to subconsciously compete with people, who didn’t even know I existed. Especially when it came to how I looked, what I did, how much I socialized, how I socialized, and how academically and career-wise I was ahead. But not once during all this time, did I have the realization that hey wait a minute, I don’t actually know what this person is doing 24/7 and if they are actually like this perfect unicorn 24/7. I don’t actually know how honest they are and if they are even ‘allowed’ by the public audience to be their true self. You might have heard that quote floating around when it comes to fitness, that even if you did everything the same with a group of people, we would still all look different and might just be fit. Which is where my title comes in 🙂 what you see is not the whole truth.

Over the years, the meaning that social media has in my life has evolved from being toxic to inspiring. That was a conscious effort I made because over time I started realizing how shitty I feel after mindlessly scrolling and some of the ‘real’ accounts showed me posts waking me up to reality. My profile included right now, is all happy moments and except for like one post which I have about my depression and not giving up. Now I am not saying we should all be posting sad moments, bad moments, and be Debby downers on social media. What I am saying is that all those posts you see on a profile are not the whole truth and are most certainly not a showcase of what that person is living life like 24/7. We all have our bad days, our failures, our faults, our missteps, and our mistakes but somehow because of how intrusive and overpowering social media is in our lives, we think that life should be perfect and that we are unsuccessful if we don’t have what our friends, family, and influencers have supposedly 24/7.

Unfortunately, this has blurred the lines between the social media world and the real world, where even off social media, people who are not influencers and posting content every 5 minutes feel the pressure to be perfect in their lives almost every second. I think this is because we consume social media so much that it has found a permanent seat in our subconscious. Where every choice and every thought is tainted with unrealistic expectations that have branched out from what we see on social media. Many a time, social media use has been considered a form of addiction. This happens when you continuously keep feeding your brain the same type of posts over and over again. Now just like say alcohol or drugs, there are side effects and in this case, it can mean we no longer quite have a sense of reality and lose sense of the fact that life contains highs and lows not just highs.

Now I could sit here and tell you how to reduce scrolling and using social media and all that shenanigans. But instead of doing that, cause I know you know what you need to do already, I would like to just be that simple reminder messenger. That what you see on social media is not the full picture or the whole truth. It is not a blueprint of how you should live your life nor is it an institution that decides whether or not you are living the right way. It can be a place for you to be inspired and make you aware of ways you can make your life better. But it is not the whole storybook, it is simply a chapter.

Indian Chameleon’s Obiter Dictum for the Day
Make your own box. If you want to know the ways you can shape it and need inspiration look at others and take what you like. It is not meant to tell you that your box is wrong.