However, on this particular lonely night, I accidentally clicked on a link that took me to the FaceBook page of a friend. I admired this friend, and had no idea they even had a FB account. I poked around a few photos, and then saw the number of "FaceBook Friends" and other comments left by people, and I felt lower than low. The photos seemed to tell a wonderful story and the quantity of "FaceBook Friends" and comments and likes seemed to scream that this person, unlike me, was very popular and well-liked and had lots of friends. The more I looked, the worst I felt about myself.
Of course we know none of this is true. "FaceBook Friends" aren't necessarily people you can call at midnight when your tire blows out on the interstate, or who will be the first on the scene to offer real support when life throws a major curve ball. It is also a falsehood that my life is of less value or worth because I do not have a hundred or more followers of my blog or less/no love button pushes on another non-FaceBook social media site I frequent daily.And most of all, we know that the face we often present in social media, in various online venues, and even in email isn't always the whole picture. What we present, more often than not, is our highlight reel, our most shining and bright moments, our brilliant sound bytes. We curate our feed with the intent of crafting a specific message, and it's not usually about the less-then-stellar moments we all have.
Comparing someone's highlight reel to our real life will always have us come up short. REAL life, not REEL life. You know the one.... real life is the one with the feels-like-they-glow-in-the-dark stains on our shirts, the low bank balance, the sick kid/dog/parent/spouse, the feeling of being so much less than or not as good as others… all the un-edited things we know about ourselves, but we don't know about these other people and isn't shown on their social feed or social face.
I've said it before: COMPARISON IS THE THIEF OF JOY. We know this.But let's take it one step further today.
What about when we compare even ourselves to ourselves? The constant pushing pushing pushing to do more, work harder, beat our previous record, be our "best" selves? To learn more and create with greater skills, win the promotion, advance up the career ladder, be the best mom. Or maybe it's to be able to run a marathon, get fit, learn a new language or play an instrument, or even travel more. In other words, always looking for ways to improve or increase our social standing, or for the admiration of others, or even winning a competition of some kind. don't get me wrong; I am not saying these things are bad. What I am saying is that we need to look a little deeper before continuing to push ourselves into a frenzied mess.
We do that by looking at the source of these urges. Do they come from reading a magazine, or someone’s blog or Instagram or FB page and thinking, “Oh, that would be cool!” Or maybe reading lists of things I "should" do someday, places I "should" go, achievements others have done, and I feel I, too, "should" do them. Will accomplishing these things increase my personal sense of contentment, or is it just one more rung on the ladder or turning of the hamster wheel? One more notch in my belt of achievements?
None of us have all the time in the world, and none of us have all the resources available to do everything, so we must be picky. We can begin to take a step back when we feel these urges to go running off the deep end of some hot new self-improvement project and ask ourselves how meaningful doing this "thing" will be for us? Is it a time filler? Will accomplishing this lead to higher satisfaction, or will it fuel those urges to keep doing more and pushing harder? At some point in time, we have to admit that we often dangle a carrot on a stick in front of ourselves, never being content with who we have already become.
If we are pushing ourselves for some sense of faux self-improvement by the constant need to better yesterday's best (which isn't even possible, when you think about it), how meaningful is it in the grander scheme of things? The issue here is whether we are working so hard to make our life look like the highlight reels we show to the world, or if we are truly living a contented life, highlighting who we really are. Highlight reels or highlighted reals? Which are you choosing?
When will the never-ending race to the finish line which never appears (or appears momentarily before being moved further down the road yet again) finally be so exhausting that we collapse in a heap and wonder why we feel so burned out?
What brings more meaning to your life, and what brings more contentment? When will being you as you are right now finally be enough, or must you always keep one-upping yourself? Because if you are constantly one-upping yourself, this is also how you see, and judge, the world and other people. We often claim to be harder on ourselves than we are others, but the truth is that we judge others by the same standards by which we judge ourselves. We just don't always admit to it. We can only stop judging the world when we stop the harsh judgements of ourselves, exacting standards which are impossible to meet, never being content with who we have already become.
When can self-improvement slow down so as to find deeper roots?
Where is your focus? On putting out the leaves and blooms, or slowing down for deeper roots? In this season of Sukkot, we celebrate the fall harvest by spending time in temporary 3-walled huts with roofs through which we can see the night sky.The lesson of Sukkot is that life is fragile, and that the temporal nature of life and superficial aspect of our highlight reels will not bring us contentment, which is our deepest yearning.
We all know that a tree will crash and even do great damage in the storm if it has not spent enough energy on establishing deep roots.
May our Sukkot remind us that life is not about the highlight reels, but the highlighted reals. Let us choose wisely, with our limited time and resources.
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