Forget about picture perfect
Why you need to stop comparing yourself to everyone else on social media.
Have you ever scrolled through your social media pages and thought that everyone else was living a perfect life but you?
Have you ever felt as if your life could never measure up to those of the friends in your newsfeed? Picture after picture of seemingly perfect people living out seemingly perfect lives.
The question I have often pondered is: “Does the perfect life truly exist or have I missed something because my life is far from perfect?” I couldn’t even tell you how many times I’ve tried to crop, edit, or alter my pictures in some shape or fashion so that they could make me look more fun, exciting, and worthy of a like on Facebook or Instagram.
Reality check
Then, one day it hit me. While I was enjoying myself at a beach near my home in Southern California, there was a guy roller-skating with a video-camera. I watched him as he skated past me and he stopped not too far from me and began speaking into the camera. He was describing his setting and then proceeded to tell his audience that he was filming that day in the lovely Key West…in Florida! I could not help but laugh because I knew we were in California!
Yet a part of me was disturbed by this because every single person who watches his clip will believe that he had the luxury of traveling to Florida just to film that episode. It truly dawned on me in that very moment that I have been guilty of this many times, just in different ways. I could not stop thinking about how silly our society has become that we have gone to so many lengths to try to present ourselves and our lives in dishonest ways.
What we put ourselves through
We edit, whiten, clip, crop, and completely alter our pictures and captions so that we seem more interesting than someone else, just so that we can stay in the contest that we all subconsciously participate in, comparing our lives to one another. All the while, our hearts begging others to not reject us online, because if all our perfect friends knew how broken and imperfect our lives really were, they would banish us from the contest.
The perfect life
Here’s the scoop…the perfect life does exist…BUT it is only in each of our heads. We all have certain ideas of what the perfect life or situation would look like. The reality, however, is that no one has ever lived a perfect life other than our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He is the only One in all of history who has ever experienced perfection. It is foolish of us to sit around scrolling through our newsfeeds believing the lie of the perfect life.
We spend so much time focusing on fleeting things like our hair, our clothes, our academic or athletic successes, etc. Instead, we should be focusing on how to be better at loving, better at sharing, better at being kind and respectful to one another. Comparison is one of the biggest ways that our enemy tries to take us off of the path that God has laid out for us.
Don’t let him. Next time you are tempted to believe the lies about perfect people on social media, remember that no life is perfect and your life has purpose and, if you allow Him the opportunity, Jesus has plans to bless your life exceedingly above and beyond your wildest dreams! Now doesn't that sound perfect?!
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