It seems to be that I can't stop feeling discontent when I start to scroll through my various social networks.
Especially with Valentine's happening last week, I flipped through picture upon picture upon picture of The Perfect Boyfriend and The Surprise Roses and The Romantic Scavenger Hunt. And each time I saw these things, knowing full well that I was not in the pool of recipients of such awesomeness, I felt a stab of jealousy. I found myself even less happy about my lack of soul mate than usual when reflecting on my additional lack of expensive chocolate and beautiful bouquet.
And this doesn't mean that I was only discontent last week. I often find myself swallowing sighs of resentment as I see an elated I'm Engaged! post or a picture of My Beautiful New Ring. In this No Man's Land of post-college twentysomethingness, everyone is landing dream jobs, getting married, having babies, and living happily ever after.
A few days ago, I was scrolling through the explore section of Instagram. I happened upon an account belonging to one of those girls who has an insanely good body and only puts up pictures of herself being hot. Being hot on the beach. Being hot in her pajamas. Being hot having drinks with friends. Being hot with a puppy. You get the idea. And I felt so unhappy with my own appearance. Every time I see something like this, I'm jealous. "She's probably one of those girls who doesn't even have to try," I think to myself bitterly. Or even if she did have to try really REALLY hard, why does she get to look so hot? I've lost 60 pounds and I still look like a beached whale in a bikini.
So maybe it's time to swear off social media, since all it does is make me see how lame my life is compared to everybody else's.
And then today, as I saw an excited post about something genuinely good happening to someone, I began to examine my own discontentment.
Why am I bitter or resentful or jealous when something good happens to someone else? When has another girl getting flowers meant that something was taken away from me? And whatever happened to being genuinely happy for other people when something awesome happens?
What if I felt happiness for other people every time they had a good thing happen? That would mean that even if I was having a horrible day, I could get on Facebook and see an album about My Dream Trip to Florence and feel happier. Not because anything good happened to me. Just because someone I knew had something good happen to them. And that should make me happy. Because I like other people, and I want their lives to be good and happy and filled with expensive chocolate and beautiful flowers and rings and marriages and babies and fun jobs.
This is not to say that I will immediately begin to feel overwhelming joy when someone else has a great day and I just stepped in a puddle in my new shoes and gained five pounds and am still single and don't have a puppy. But it does mean that I'm going to stop looking at everything through the lens of "why life isn't as nice to me as it is to them" and start looking through "hey, life is cool and people have awesome experiences".
So even if I am not the hot girl on Instagram (which, to be honest, is fair, considering the fact that I just ate a sleeve of Peeps and an entire Totino's pizza), I am still a girl with lots of cool experiences and plenty of selfies to go around. And even if I don't have The Perfect Boyfriend who gave me A Dazzling Bouquet of Sunflowers with a note that says, "These flowers will never compare to you," I will someday (perhaps not exactly like that, but hopefully something cheesy and embarrassing and cute) and I should be happy for people who do.
So yes, social media does make me want to change. But I think that becoming a person who is happy for other people with no agendas is probably a change for the better.
