I posted a picture to social media last week of a moose that I saw while exploring the Bighorn Mountains. Someone commented, "Can I have your life?" I immediately felt both uncomfortable and ashamed. These feelings arose because for one, I don't want my social media to portray a perfect life, because it is far from that. Secondly, it saddened me to think that a piece of content that I post could make someone else feel like their own life is inadequate. Sure, it was probably just a light comment that maybe meant nothing, just a phrase, but still - it held weight to me. The aim of sharing content, in my opinion, should be to inspire others, make people happy, and update friends and family. It should certainly not be to make other people's lives feel lacking, but it still manages to do just that every day. I have felt these feelings of lacking too, such as when when looking at a model posing in front of a waterfall in Bali while I'm waking up groggily with my hair sticking up every which way to go to work for eight hours.
But social media isn't what I want to talk about right now. Myself, and the rest of the world, have rigorously discussed the harmful effects of social media. We have heard that social media is the devil like a broken record, and I am not here to support or refute that idea. Right now I want to talk about how I think we can be fulfilled in our lives.
For people to say things like, "Can I have your life?", it must mean that there is something that a person thinks their life is lacking in. Perhaps seeing a picture of a moose reminds a person that they enjoy the outdoors and animals, and they haven't fulfilled that in their own day to day lives. Humans have become very specialized beings. We oftentimes choose one occupation or location, and stick with that until the remainder of our days. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, since we all like to feel like we are really good at a certain task. However, we have a relatively short time here on earth, so naturally we want to fit many experiences in. But is it possible to do everything? No, but it is possible to do a select amount of things with meaning, while also giving value to the things that we do.
If we go into every life experience with the mindset of thankfulness rather than it building on an unquenchable thirst, then we will feel much more satisfied with our lives. The drawback of having so many experiences documented online, is that it can create a void in people who feel the natural desire to do everything and not miss out. We can instead look at our lives and see all we already have, instead of everything we don't. Our lives are much richer than we sometimes view them to be. The happiest people I have ever met seem "lacking" from our societal standards.
My co-worker from a job I had in college is the happiest man I have ever met. Every single day I came into work, he would greet me with the biggest smile and say, "It's a beautiful day, is it not?" We both worked customer service, and even going on 8 hours he would greet every single customer with a smile, and ask them how their day is going and continue to smile even if they were grumpy.
This man is an immigrant from Nepal and a father of four, and his commute to his minimum wage job every morning is 2 hours on public transportation. It would be understandable if he was groggy when we came into work, but he never was. I only had to walk 2 minutes down the street from my apartment, and I had a few grumpy mornings. This man wasn't rich and did not work some glamorous job, yet he was happier and more successful than most of the cliche "successful" people I know. I sometimes find myself envious of his life - his ability to stay consistently thankful and positive. Perhaps I saw a lack of thankfulness in myself.
Now when I look at his life, I see that he is rich. He wakes up every morning, knowing he has brought four lives into this world, comes to work at a beautiful place in Boston with co-workers who care about him, and achieved his goal of immigrating to America. I was never super close with this man, but from what I remember, he was fully aware of what he had, and didn't dwell on what he didn't have.
You cannot feel like you are lacking when you allow yourself to be filled up with everything you already do have. It would be easy to look at this town I'm in right now and see everything it is lacking. It certainly is no Boston, but Boston is certainly not here. Lovell does not have the coffeeshops, vibrant community gardens, pop up art shows every weekend, or wild and exciting streets. Boston does not have mountains views from every perspective, a mesmerizngly silent canyon, or wildlife that is truly wild. Let's flip the script and talk about everything we have, rather than everything we don't. By doing this, we will see our lives are much fuller than we ever thought.
