One thing about life that I have slowly started to understand is that depending on how you look at your life , other people's lives almost always look better from a distance. Maybe it is because we only get to see the parts they allow us to see, or maybe it is because we naturally compare our behind the scenes with someone else's highlight reel.
I was reminded of this recently when I was talking to one of my cousins. Somewhere in the middle of our conversation, she casually said to me, "You don't have problems. Your life is nice." I literally paused. I was like, "What?" Because here I am, sitting with my own collection of problems, worries, uncertainties, responsibilities and things that I don't necessarily talk about. There are days when I genuinely feel like I am drowning in my own thoughts, trying to figure out what I am doing with my life and whether I am even where I am supposed to be and somehow, from her perspective, I am the person who "doesn't have problems." It was funny, but at the same time, it really made me think. How many people do I look at and think the exact same thing?
Their is another cousin of mine who always seems so bubbly and full of life. If you follow her on Instagram, you would probably think everything is going wonderfully for her. She is in school, she has a lot going on, she attends conferences, participates in outreaches, meets people, takes pictures and generally gives off the impression that life is moving in a really good direction. Whenever I see her posts, I think, "This girl is doing well." She seems busy, purposeful and happy. She looks like someone who has things figured out, or at least someone who is enjoying the process of figuring them out. Then one day, she messaged me and told me she was suicidal.
I was like, "Whaaaaaat?" I remember just staring at the message because I genuinely couldn't reconcile the person I was seeing online with the person who was talking to me. This was someone I had mentally placed in the category of people whose lives were going well. She was young, pretty, she was in school, she was attending events, doing outreaches, meeting people and posting happy pictures. Yet behind all of that, she was struggling with something so serious that I had absolutely no idea about.
It reminded me that we are all walking around with incomplete information about each other. We see the graduation pictures but not the nights someone cried because they were terrified about the future. We see the new job announcement but not the anxiety that comes with wondering whether they are actually good enough. We see the relationship pictures but not the arguments, doubts or loneliness. The interesting thing is that people aren't necessarily even pretending. My cousin really might have been happy when she took those pictures. She really might enjoy her conferences and outreaches. She might genuinely love her friends, enjoy school and appreciate the opportunities she has, but the thing with happiness is that it is all about moments, as i saw in an interview that Zlatan Ibrahimovic did and i resonate with him. He said happiness is literally just moments, because you are happy in one moment doesn't mean someone is incapable of being deeply unhappy in another. Both things can exist at the same time.
I think this is why comparing our lives to other people's lives can be so unfair to ourselves. We are comparing our entire reality to the small portion of someone else's reality that happens to be visible to us and of course, that comparison is almost always going to make us feel inadequate. You look at someone and think, "Look at her life. Everything is working out for her." Meanwhile, that same person might look at you and think, "This person has it so easy. I wish I had their life" and both of you could be completely wrong.
Maybe that is why we need to be a little gentler with ourselves. Life is already difficult enough without constantly convincing ourselves that everyone else is doing better than we are. These days, when I see someone whose life looks perfect, I try to remind myself that maybe it really is going well for them, and that's wonderful but I also know that I am looking at only one chapter, perhaps even one paragraph, of their story. But at the end of the day i will keep striving for that happiness, till i attain it and that happy or perfect life my cousin thought i was living, i want to live it one day.