This article was published in Women of Egypt Magazine on April 23, 2020
You open your eyes yawning and the first thing you do is
reach out for your cellphone on the bedside table. You surf social media to see what is going on
in the world you are about to face in a few moments. You start with Facebook, or maybe you prefer
Instgram and you scroll. What a lovely world!
First post:
You see your favorite actress playing yoga in an
enchantingly garden, her body lean and
ideal in a brand outfit that costs a fortune, her hair tied in a long lease
ponytail the color of chocolate, smiling to show off her Hollywood teeth. Unconsciously, you start to pity
yourself: you are still in your bed,
tired as hell; the headache you slept with is still persistent; your disheveled
hair sticks to your face and the back of your neck due to sweat, worrying about
the hundred things you have to do today.
Second post:
Your friend from high who migrated twenty years is on her
vacation in the Caribbean. She is in a sheer vibrantly colored dress and the
latest brand sunglasses and shiny lip color, soaking her bare feet in the water
while her hair flies away in the air, surrounded by lovely children building
huge castles in the sand. Your feeling of lack intensifies.
Third post:
You scroll down and a few posts later, you see your neighbor
showing off a wonderful cake she has just baked and commenting “ Made with
Love” and you wonder why you cannot bake anything without burning it! The cake lady has a hundred likes and tens of
“wows” and comments begging her to write the recipe. The disappointment and indignation that
started two posts above build up and you wonder, self- disapprovingly why
cannot you cook meals that amaze others and make you proud on social media.
Fourth post:
An old colleague looks surprised: the manager of the company she works for has
left a bouquet of daisies and a chocolate box on her desk to thank her for her
efforts. “That’s it!” You cannot take any more of Facebook and you
jump out of bed. The famous comment of
comedian Hala Sidky in one of her movies rings in your ears: What about the gangs of good for nothing
people I work with? Why cannot anyone appreciate my hard work?! You feel depressed and underappreciated in
work.
You decide to switch to Instagram for a quick view only to
find your cousin in Canada in a classy restaurant with a group of good-looking friends savoring
a dish of lasagna; she looks thin and the mounts of cheeses that ooze out of
the dish seem not to bother her in the least.
You feel an urge to go devour all the cheeses you can get hold of and
wish you can have such gorgeous friends to take you out to fancy restaurants in
foreign lands.
The “fake” paradise you see on social media makes you feel
miserable; the message your subconscious gets out of all the above posts is a
message of lack: in order for you to be
happy, you must have all that this actress has:
a large house with a garden, a great body, expensive brand clothes, a
private trainer, a daily hairdo and new teeth!
You also need to travel abroad for your next vacation and get overpriced
sunglasses; you must find new outgoing friends to take you places and treat you
like a queen. You must find another job where are given more credit for your
work. You might also want to change your
children and get new ones who look as good as the ones surrounding your friend
on the beach. You lack all these things!
In other words, you need to be someone other than yourself to be happy.
Under the colorful surface
What if you look beyond this blissful paradise on social
media before you allow your mind to drift away to compare your real life with
that of others? Before you are carried away
in a cycle of never ending dissatisfaction and disappointment about your
own circumstances try doing this one thing:
imagine the back stage. I have
tried it and it shifted my thinking one hundred eighty degrees and I strongly
recommend it to family and friends all the time.
Backstage peek
In all the sights of happy and joyful people in the above posts,
you see only the end result; you do not see the moments of pain and hard work
that preceded the final look presented on social media. Your favorite actress surely did not become
in great shape in her seventies without having to sweat for hours every day in
the gym her whole life; she did not have photos showing her body under the
knife of a surgeon or at least having Botox and filler shots all over her face
and neck to maintain her younger looks. Nor did she photograph herself while
the dentist worked his puzzling painful tools in her mouth. After all, you should be grateful you are not
like her; you are not to be judged by millions only by your looks.
You did not see the backbreaking work that your old
colleague did before getting the flowers and chocolate. Maybe she had been
working for months, sleep- deprived, drinking tons of coffee to meet deadlines
that other colleagues failed to do. You
did not see the backstage of all the stories and you cannot compare yourself to
them unless you do. Are you willing to go through hell for a few moments of
eye-catching bless on social media? Are
you ready to pay the price of a post that gets likes and wows?
Let’s not be deceived by social media which presents only a
segment of a story; let’s see the whole story.
Let’s look beyond Paradise and be thankful and grateful for what we
have.
