Have you ever experienced the fear of missing out (FOMO) when you witness your favorite influencers going on a brand trip? Better yet, have you ever wished that your reality was one that others experience? 

Please know, everyone starts somewhere. And your reality can be anything that you want it to be, as long as you personalize it to what you want. Don’t fall into a trap where you feel unsatisfied because your life may not look like somebody else’s. Nobody — and I mean nobody — has as perfect of a life as they portray. Why? 

We’re human. 

Social media has inflated the idea over time that our lives only matter if we can enjoy the “next big thing.” I hate to say that, as social media can be beneficial; however, it is a place that undermines the “normal” life.

Of course, when we click through social media, we see highlights of everybody’s best days, moments or experiences. It’s all those things that create the question: Will our world ever go back to the way it was before, where children ran to the park to play baseball at the crack of dawn or the found excitement in getting ice cream, specifically with rainbow sprinkles?  

Except, what world has ever been a daydream, and what world has ever directly told everybody to find their own unique purpose? I often wonder if people did the same things back then that we do now — only sharing the “exciting” information but simply couldn’t publish it on the Internet. Maybe that’s why we, now, have a difficult concept of what is normal and what is not. 

I always find myself imagining the possibility of living an exciting life — in my own way, of course. What my version of exciting is may completely differ from yours, and I’ve learned that that’s okay. However, social media can manipulate those feelings to make us feel as though we are missing out, not living freely enough or failing to recognize what is “important.”

With that being said, romanticization isn’t so pink after all. We live inside of each mind that we possess, and it misconstrues reality from delusion. Delusion has a negative connotation, but it doesn’t have to. Sometimes, we just want what we think is best for each of us, and realistically, we don’t know what that is. Instead of relying on others to create our persona for us, it’s important to remember that we all come from a different background, and we all have a sense of an ideal world that cannot be the same as somebody else’s. We’re just perfectly different, is all. 

Social media does not, and should not, be what we expect on an everyday basis. So many things are happening around us that we need to remember this: it’s not about what you see, but it’s about what you do. Complying to weekly trends is not helping the world, nor is it helping you. It’s doing the opposite; it’s proving that conformity is acceptable, and that, especially now, is not the case. 

Everybody is entitled to how they feel, of course. Nevertheless, the glorification of specific lifestyles has created a deficit of personality within the population. Often, I see the bandwagon effect in full throttle; people forget their roots and wish for something that others have simply because of the positive attention that it receives. 

What gains attention is a glamorous lifestyle. This is not one that everybody gets to experience in their lifetimes, and who is to say that one particular lifestyle is one-size-fits-all? With the constant changes of our society, the most beneficial piece of information to understand and digest is that we do not need to be like everybody else. 

I’ve heard for as long as I can remember, and I agree, that if we were all the same, the world would be horrendously boring. 

If there weren’t farmers or agriculture, we wouldn’t have most of the food that we eat on a daily basis. If we didn’t have directors, we wouldn’t have inspiring cinema. If we didn’t have doctors, we wouldn’t be healthy. If we didn’t have teachers, we would lack a severe education. If we didn’t have authors, we wouldn’t be able to read the testimonies of thousands of people who came before us. If we didn’t have influencers, we wouldn’t get the raw genuineness of the human condition. 

All of these lifestyles are equally as glamorous because of one factor: they are driven by differently passionate individuals. Sure, there are several sides of social media that discuss each one of these categories, but the main lifestyle that we see, and yearn for, is one that is unobtainable due to a black hole of insincerity. 

Nothing is what it seems, and I think that the sooner we realize that the sooner we can become a much more cohesive, interesting society. There is no reason for a divide just because we don’t all want the same things from these lives that we have the privilege of living. We should naturally appreciate ours and our counterparts’ differences. 

In a world full of exclusive romanticization, I choose the rainbow. I want options, and you should, too. 

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