This post was published in The Egyptian Gazette 11th of July, 2019
You open
your eyes yawning and the first thing you do is reach out for your cellphone on
the bedside table. You surf social media
to see what is going on in the world you are about to face in a few
moments. You start with Facebook, or
maybe you prefer Instgram and you scroll. What a lovely world!
First post:
You see your
favorite actress playing yoga in an enchantingly garden, her body lean and ideal in a brand outfit
that costs a fortune, her hair tied in a long lease ponytail the color of
chocolate, smiling to show off her Hollywood teeth. Unconsciously, you start to pity
yourself: you are still in your bed,
tired as hell; the headache you slept with is still persistent; your disheveled
hair sticks to your face and the back of your neck due to sweat, worrying about
the hundred things you have to do today.
Second post:
Your friend
from high who migrated twenty years is on her vacation in the Caribbean. She is
in a sheer vibrantly colored dress and the latest brand sunglasses and shiny
lip color, soaking her bare feet in the water while her hair flies away in the
air, surrounded by lovely children building huge castles in the sand. Your
feeling of lack intensifies.
Third
post:
You scroll
down and a few posts later, you see your neighbor showing off a wonderful cake
she has just baked and commenting “ Made with Love” and you wonder why you
cannot bake anything without burning it!
The cake lady has a hundred likes and tens of “wows” and comments begging
her to write the recipe. The disappointment
and indignation that started two posts above build up and you wonder, self-
disapprovingly why cannot you cook meals that amaze others and make you proud on
social media.
Fourth
post:
An old
colleague looks surprised: the manager
of the company she works for has left a bouquet of daisies and a chocolate box
on her desk to thank her for her efforts.
“That’s it!” You cannot take any more of Facebook and you jump out of bed.
The famous comment of comedian Hala Sidky in one of her movies rings in
your ears: What about the gangs of good
for nothing people I work with? Why cannot anyone appreciate my hard
work?! You feel depressed and underappreciated in
work.
You decide
to switch to Instagram for a quick view only to find your cousin in Canada in a
classy restaurant with a group of good-looking
friends savoring a dish of lasagna; she looks thin and the mounts of cheeses
that ooze out of the dish seem not to bother her in the least. You feel an urge to go devour all the cheeses
you can get hold of and wish you can have such gorgeous friends to take you out
to fancy restaurants in foreign lands.
The “fake”
paradise you see on social media makes you feel miserable; the message your subconscious
gets out of all the above posts is a message of lack: in order for you to be happy, you must have
all that this actress has: a large
house with a garden, a great body, expensive brand clothes, a private trainer,
a daily hairdo and new teeth! You also
need to travel abroad for your next vacation and get overpriced sunglasses; you
must find new outgoing friends to take you places and treat you like a queen. You
must find another job where are given more credit for your work. You might also want to change your children
and get new ones who look as good as the ones surrounding your friend on the
beach. You lack all these things! In
other words, you need to be someone other than yourself to be happy.
Under the
colorful surface
What if you
look beyond this blissful paradise on social media before you
allow your mind to drift away to compare your real life with that of others? Before
you are carried away in a cycle of never
ending dissatisfaction and disappointment about your own circumstances try
doing this one thing: imagine the back
stage. I have tried it and it
shifted my thinking one hundred eighty degrees and I strongly recommend it to
family and friends all the time.
Backstage peek
In all the sights of happy and joyful people in the above posts, you see
only the end result; you do not see the moments of pain and hard work that
preceded the final look presented on social media. Your favorite actress surely did not become
in great shape in her seventies without having to sweat for hours every day in
the gym her whole life; she did not have photos showing her body under the
knife of a surgeon or at least having Botox and filler shots all over her face
and neck to maintain her younger looks. Nor did she photograph herself while
the dentist worked his puzzling painful tools in her mouth. After all, you should be grateful you are not
like her; you are not to be judged by millions only by your looks.
You did not see the backbreaking work that your old colleague did before
getting the flowers and chocolate. Maybe she had been working for months, sleep-
deprived, drinking tons of coffee to meet deadlines that other colleagues
failed to do. You did not see the backstage of all the stories and you cannot compare yourself to them unless you do.
Are you willing to go through hell for a few moments of eye-catching bless on
social media? Are you ready to pay the
price of a post that gets likes and wows?
Let’s not be deceived by social media which presents only a segment of a
story; let’s see the whole story. Let’s
look beyond Paradise and be thankful and grateful for what we have.
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