Unfiltered

Ever wondered what would happen if people were completely honest online?

Instead of “I saw this beautiful sunset last night #blessed” it might say “I saw this dog poop into a small body of water behind a sandbank and then a baby jumped in there with her sister and that sister said “this water is nice and warm” and I just wanted to throw up and had to tell the mom what had happened just minutes earlier and she decided to get her kids out and there was complete chaos and crying/screaming”.

Or that picture perfect postcard-like shot of the gorgeous countryside? People hardly ever include the story behind a picture or what it took to get there. There might have been a lot of wind. They might have fallen off their bikes on the way there. They forgot to bring water. They realized they were not used to riding a bike and nearly died. The smell of the countryside was unbearable because of the heat but look how cute – cows. You get the picture.

It’s a behavior that we learned. We only ever share our victories and not our struggles. I’ve written about this before. With social media things have just gotten a whole lot worse.

We are trained to compare ourselves with others. I mean we’re told not to, but then from the time we are born we’re measured in any way possible and put in percentiles. Well done society – you’re being super unhelpful. Teaching us that we need to be compared to others in any way that you can come up with, yet we’re told not to constantly compare ourselves to others. And that makes sense to you?

I mean I can be perfectly happy with my life, my income, my job, my whatever else I have and then I find out that

• there’s people way less qualified than me who make a lot more money.

• there’s people out there who actually really LOVE their jobs.

• there’s people out there who just seem to have it all.

• there’s people out there who make money seemingly without any effort.

How are we not going to feel envious and start feeling bad about our lives? Comparison kills all the joy. Yet, comparison is what we are taught.

I can totally be happy beating my personal best time when I swim my 1 km in the morning and not worry about what Olympic swimmers are doing, but in other aspects of life it’s not that easy. I’m blaming society. I totally am. There are four chapters in my upcoming book that go under the header of “society sucks”.

Of course, it’s also up to us to be okay with not having everything, with not having everything figured out yet, with there being room for growth, with (hopefully) making enough money to live on, with the life we’re living. And if we’re really not happy, that’s the room for change, for growth. We can follow new ideas. Fail. Try again. That’s pretty much what life is about.

And it is freaking unfair at times, freaking infuriating at others and such a freaking mess most of the time. We’re just very good at not letting on. Nobody wants to see and hear about that. Or maybe they do. I’m so tempted to start a new Instagram Account that has “unfiltered” in the name and share the stories behind the pictures. Like the dog poop story above, which I don’t have photographic evidence of. I don’t take pictures of dogs pooping nor do I take pictures of random children.

Now let me tell you the story behind this ice cream picture. Looks yummy, right? Okay so here’s what it took me to get that. I got in line and saw that they had a monster cup for kids. It was basically soft ice cream with blue sprinkles and the cup was a special kid’s cup – cute and all. So, since you can’t usually get the kid’s choices as an adult and there were no small kids around that I could “borrow”, I figured I’d just get something else.

Well, I then thought to myself “I wonder if I can get the blue monster sprinkles on one of the other ones”. Lots of anxiety because I had to speak to an actual human and ask for something that wasn’t officially on the menu. I mean a friend who lives further up north and has had a cup of ice cream with me knows that I never just take something “normal” or something that is on the menu. And then all the kids that are still in line look at what I got and want the same and I get intro trouble with the parents, but that’s an entirely different story.

Back to the monsters.

So, I’m in line and people get their ice creams and then it’s my turn. “I would like a strawberry sunday in a small cup and would it be possible at all to have that with monster sprinkles?” Of course that was possible. All that anxiety for nothing. I walked out of there with a big grin on my face.

Yes, I do get overwhelmed by too many choices and yes, I do get equally anxious when I have to ask for something that’s not on a menu and I worry that they will say “no”. I don’t think that ever actually happened. Or only ever when it really wasn’t possible because of how the food was prepared.

But of course, “look at the cool ice cream I got on vacation #dreamicecream” sells better than admitting to feeling anxious whenever I have to order something and tell an actual person what I would like. Trauma-related. Oh, you can bet your you know what on that.

Isn’t life fun? Anyway, hope no dog pooped where you swim. Stay cool everybody. Super hot across Europe at the moment.