Thought Provoking

How To Make Your Life Actually Mean Something

In present time, we have access to thousands of resources and opinions every single day all in the palm of our hands. It’s hard to develop a genuine and unique insight on life when everyone else’s is out in the open and subconsciously effecting our own. The perception of others will always be taken into account because privacy is a rare commodity now a days and everything is recorded and stored away some place for it to come back and be used later. So how do we take the cliche out of everyday life, everyday acts, and make ours actually mean something?

The beauty of our generation is how advanced technology and communication is. It’s also our downfall. When you have countless apps focused on the perception of your external life, we spend minimum time on the internal parts of ourselves that are essential to our self-preservation. Unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily incentivize a lot of likes and follows.

As ‘holier than thou’ as we try to convince ourselves that we are, we all fall prey to todays disingenuous attempts at depth and meaning. It’s the new standard of existence in our modern world. We can absolutely find a balance between normalizing it, while keeping an indubitable grasp on what’s real, and what is simply a surface level look. 

Breaking down the reason for our incessant need of approval and recognition is key to making sure we don’t become a cliche ourselves in today’s world. Pictures of a beautiful house doesn’t always mean a happy family lives inside and pictures of a fulfilled and happy looking girl, doesn’t necessarily mean a broken and hurting one doesn’t lie beneath. 

We need to make sure that we are actually okay on a deeper level before we try to convince the world that we’ve got it all together on social media. This is what creates the continuing urgency for instant gratification for us so that we have the highs coming in at a consistent pace and it eventually dulls the actual feeling of need that we keep at arms length. 

It would be a beautiful thing if the world actually looked the way we made it seem online, but it’s just not a sustainable theory. No one wants to see the ugly parts of your internal battles or the mundane tasks of just making it through to the next day. 

We are watching our lives past by at a speed that will take us to the grave before we actually start living it. We look forward to the next best thing, the next high, and convince ourselves that everything will be better once we get there or if we just had one more thing to put it all together. 

The truth is, we are all broken people glued together to make it through each day and look presentable to everyone else while we’re doing it. We need to cut the crap and start being honest with ourselves. Anything that isn’t working towards our ultimate happiness and well being isn’t worth our effort anymore. Opinions change faster than our comprehension of them do and in a week, there will be a new presumption shouting down the tunnels to trap us in a viewpoint that isn’t our own. We change ourselves at the expense of our own well-being to make unhappy people happy with us, and that is the most ridiculous part of it all. 

All of your followers and the people you follow in return, are all struggling just like you are. We encourage each other to keep up the facade we see on instagram instead of diving in to make sure the foundation we are actually standing on has enough strength left to hold us. 

The late nights you worked and the bills you skipped out on paying to buy the expensive purse or new car will never outweigh the long term effects it will have on you and your life. The likes and acceptance that matters for mere hours are not worth the long term consequences. 

High school was the original instagram. You look your best, change yourself to accommodate circumstances, and lose yourself along the way. As excited as we all were to escape it, we now freely download it on our phones and check it throughout the day to make sure no one has caught on to the lie we are trying to keep up with. You feel alone surrounded by people and unhappy with your disguise of contentment that isn’t real, and we just keep it going because we assume it’s what’s helping everyone else through.

Take a step back and make sure our lies haven’t become our reality. Accept that the ugly is necessary for our survival. It’s there to make us better and ultimately find lasting happiness that doesn’t rely on empty affirmations and actions. Invest in yourself by finding and creating substantial meaning to whatever you give your time to, but make sure it’s worth the value you are giving to it. In the end, that’s where you’ll find the life full of meaning you’ve been waiting for.