Read This If You Feel Like Your Life Is A Social Media Performance
Sometimes I imagine the advice I would give my past self is the same advice I need to hear right now. That at some point, it all stops being a performance.
And this performative nature isn’t something new to our generation. Social media didn’t singlehandedly birth status via accomplishment and/or possession. We’ve all lived it, wanting to prove something to our teachers, our peers, our parents, ourselves. That we did it, we made it. Everything is fine now, it’s all alright.
We give extra highlights to the highlight reel but we don’t show all the hours and the pain and struggles it took to get there. No one wants to see that.
Maybe we even lost a bit of ourselves in the process to get where we were headed next. The part of ourselves that was easy going or sociable had to be sacrificed in order to become the version of ourselves that had to be practical and fight for what we needed. At the end of the day, no matter how fast we run towards our dreams, sometimes reality catches up a little faster. There’s a reason nostalgia sells so well these days. We mourn the piece of our hearts that believed we could get there without anything changing. We never consider that whatever it takes will take whatever it pleases.
The mundane begins to blend with the remnants of our youth’s fiery passions, and melds into something productive. Stable. Something we can cling to when the rest of the world feels uncertain. We find a clarity in the chaos.
And then all of a sudden, the villains of our lives start to have origin stories that make sense. We’re all searching for something to hold onto in a world that’s troubled with pain. They too are trying to prove something to their teachers, their peers, their parents, themselves.
We spend our downtime watching reruns of people our age figuring it out too. We call it a guilty pleasure because we feel silly to just admit that it’s a pleasure to see someone feel so strongly about how we feel that they turned it into entertainment. Art imitates life. Maybe it’s not all so hopeless.
And suddenly the revenge fantasies become the deleted scenes of your life. The blooper reel feels less like something to cringe at and more like something you find endearing about your past self. The pain subsides. You stop worrying about making everything work and just let it be what it was always meant to be, which is more often than not transitionary.
Inevitably, you will move through the struggles of today just to find the struggles of tomorrow. You can lose yourself just to find a new version waiting in the shadows. Alternatively, you can believe yourself to be lost just to find you were there all along just waiting to be rediscovered.
No matter what you do or believe, if you are going to make your life a performance, make sure you are in the front row of the audience. That way, you will always have a fan, and you will always put on a show you can be proud of.