Mackenzie Reese

I think there’s a huge problem in society where we say we want the best for others but we don’t particularly mean it. It’s not a hatred thing (which yes, we have a lot of those in this country) but that we are groomed from such a small age to be the best. If someone is doing good, you must be doing better. And it’s so much easier to be doing better when the other is doing bad. It’s like this line that you don’t have to worry about. I might be struggling, but she is failing.

In psychology we talked about it as a reasoning standard. I got a 70% which isn’t bad compared to the fact Asheley got a 65%. It makes you feel like you don’t have to do better because someone is always doing worse. Which is sad as it is.

But life complicates this as it’s not straight forward. It’s not spending more hours studying or trying a little harder, but actual real issues you have to face every day. And no matter how much you try to solve these issues there’s always going to be more.

So, you sit in a café with you friend who turns with a smile and tells you she’s doing great and it hurts. Because you are just doing good. Not great, but good. You want to be happy for her, but it’s hard when you want to be great too. It’s all very complicated. And if I’m being honest I don’t think I’m even explain it right, but it’s hard to be genially happy for others in today’s society because of the constant pressure to be just as great.

It’s hard because they don’t even have to be actually doing great, but the pictures they post and the make-up they wear and the bad things they don’t say all point an arrow that shows that on the success scale they are higher than you. Society is set up in a way so you always are explicitly aware of what you don’t have. It’s like a constant feed loop showing how much better you could be. It only allows you to appreciate what’s yours until the likes run out and someone’s else’s picture replaces yours. In seconds, you are irrelevant.

It makes me sad because we are all evolved in this feedback loop from hell. Even I often find myself posting something not to show the goodtime I’m having but to show that everyone else is not. Its why we constantly post throwback pictures and have photo shoots for the “feed”. To stay relevant, active, to show everyone who’s life is on top. Socially media is constructed to show the very best version of yourself. This is great. But in today’s society most people’s best versions are not real. They are edited, filtered and re-posted multiple times a week, just to make sure it looks like the good time never ends.

So I guess in a way it’s not that we don’t want the best for others, it’s just that we don’t want their best to outshine are good. Because the truth is, none of our goods or greats are really what we portray them to be. We want there to be room for one of us to be great without it impacting how the other feels about themselves. But this time of the media world  makes that extremely difficult. Which in turn makes it hard to listen to someone’s great when your only feeling good.