These past few days, I drastically lessened my time on Facebook and Twitter. As for Instagram, I still view stories but I only scroll a little on my feed. I thought it’ll be hard but “Empress Ki” made it easier for me. Guys, it’s a good K-Drama and it has 51 episodes so it can consume your time immensely.
Why did I do that? I observed that I spent more time with my beloved phone and tablet since the lockdown. Well, what is there to do? And during our ongoing quarantine period, I looked into many lives. Social media is a world, an alternate world where everything seemed better if not close to perfection. And I don’t blame people. I don’t put my lowest points online. But I don’t also share my best times.
And I am different, as we all are. I saw people (mostly celebrities and influencers) sharing all those good stuff on their instagram pages. No, that’s not bad. “You do you, babe” – This is always my motto in letting people live their lives. But I will not hide the fact that I question my standing in society whenever I see how far others are going on with their lives.
Maybe it’s because of quarter-life crisis, I’m not totally sure. I remember comforting myself years ago that my life will be so much better once I start earning money for myself. That this life will definitely be more comfortable, that I can buy anything I yearned for. Fast forward to my current age – all of what I hoped for didn’t come true. I won’t give you the details but life fucked me harder as I grew older.
You know what it feels to know that your peers seem to live comfortable lives now because you have different circumstances? It’s both sad and fine, actually. It’s sad because you feel so far behind but it’s fine because basically, we are meant live differently. As you may have heard this a lot, life isn’t a race and we have our own timelines. I always think of it that way to keep myself going. If we are riding on the same boat, please think of it that way too. We’ll definitely get “there”, not just now. Not just the same time as them.
Now that I have changed the way I look into the realities of life, I took another step. I already mentioned it in the first paragraph of this blog post. And so far, I’m happy with my decision. There’s beauty in not knowing what others are up to. With what milestones they achieved today or with anything good that happens in their day. It’s not that I can’t be happy for them but because I want to live my life based on what my eyes see when I look around and not what I see through screens.
These are the things I learned so far: 1) I can spend my time with a number of ways other than drowning myself in social media. 2) My decision to watch K-Dramas is a good choice because I don’t always see the good. 3) I had time to rethink about how far I’ve come compared to where I was. 4) The inner child in me can already be happy.
Ending this by elaborating the fourth point that I mentioned – I’ve come across a post that shared “One of the ways to live a happy life is to not lose the inner child in you”. If I’ll recall what I wanted when I was a little boy, I’m proud to say that I can now give what he wished for. I’ve always wanted candies but since I can’t afford those expensive candies (and they taste really good) on a regular basis, I often dreamed of growing up to buy them all. You see, I said earlier that my life didn’t get better as I aged. I realized that it wasn’t entirely the case. It’s just that my desires now are different. I felt bad because I’m still unable to get what I currently want but I missed the point where I can now get what I longed for as a child. It may be silly and ridiculous to hear, but why question what a child wants?
WanderNine 