"Yea, that journey wasn't too hard anyway"

Have you ever felt small, unworthy and constantly wondering why our life is not like someone else's? Which almost always sound more amazing than ours when the primitive brain takes over. I know I've felt like that, and it can be a constant struggle to say that mine is enough; without a good or bad judgment but an "enough" that brings inner peace. I think I've mentioned before in one of my previous posts about how so many external stimulation leaves us feeling that we need to respond to each and every one, and when we can't, we feel like we missed out on something which could potentially make us feel so damn awesome. There is a term for this;  FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)  is the hip term that describes the emotions that arise (often negative) when we perceive to be missing out on something that is life-changing (really?).

Though if we give more thought to it, if it's even substantially true that this other person has the most amazing life that you wish you had, what makes us think the process of getting there was anything but NOT amazing? In an era where everything is publicized and taken at face value, the complexity of human beings become very much one-dimensional. Whether it is a FB status (guilty!) or an Instagram photo (double guilty!), we very quickly assume that one facet of this person's life IS the person's life. While there are those who constantly publicize aspects of their life that are more towards the negative end, no one actually prefers downward comparison, so we just brush them of as emo/*insert judging term*.

But when it comes to photos, statuses, words, blog posts *grin* that reflect more positive aspects of life, it's so easy to assume that these come easy to whoever who is posting them. And while technology is convenient, we surprisingly don't document the process of coming to the positive point, making it so much easier to assume that the positive point just happens and that for the rest of us, it should also magically appear so.

When I spoke about this with a couple of people, one thought came to my mind. More than being ungrateful for what we already have, which honestly, if you are sitting here reading this post, it's probably a life loaded with blessings, we are invalidating stories of other individuals. And that makes me uncomfortable, I actually felt sad.

What if I really fought my way to whatever blessed phase in my life, just to have people tell me "Yea, that journey wasn't too hard anyway", I would feel totally ouch. We can argue that what other people perceive of your journey is merely their perspective but I think it's time we all give some credit to hard work, and commitment to the process. Not just judging the end-all which is nothing but what's most obvious to the naked eye. While there's no need to dig into deeper meaning all the time (if curtains are blue, they are blue, not a symbol of the writer's melancholy! =_=), it would be nice to appreciate how technology has made it much easier to see beauty of so many different individuals. And to frame that beauty as something that came through a process, to believe that everyone has a story, rather than to pass judgment wondering why you don't have that beauty.

Here's to being grateful for the beauty you have that is waiting for you to realise (if you have not already), and appreciating the different beauties in life for what it means, and not just what it seems.