Everywhere we look, we’re exposed to the lives we should strive to live. A life that is coated with non-stop parties, no money issues, success, friendship and love. But none of this is real—no life is perfect, and imagining it as so can be more detrimental to you than you think.
Everything that we see on social media is perfectly curated. Every dump, no matter how messy, has been perfectly chosen to be messy. To represent a person that we are trying to be, not who we are.
Even with influencers who share every aspect of their life and talk to a screen like we are their best friends, we still don’t know them. We don’t know how they talk to their friends, their families, the people around them. How they actually feel about the people who make it into their Instagram dumps. How they interact with service workers. We know what they choose for us to know; the perfect, polished influencer that everyone strives to be.
That’s why I hate the idea of a ‘perfect’ lifestyle, because perfect to me isn’t the same as perfect to you. No two people are the same, with the same hopes and dreams, the same lifestyle, the same adventure they’re on. There is no perfect way to live.
Rather, the most perfect way to live is authentically, the way you wish to, and without the need for public support. Stop looking at your Instagram and watching the like count; remembering those who don’t comment and comparing the other online pages to your own. The most perfect way to live, and also the happiest, is to live as yourself. Without the need for recognition or approval.
The perfect lifestyle doesn’t exist, but the perfect you can exist when you let go of the impossible, fake guidelines you’re letting Instagram sell to you.