We are the generation of social media. We live with the internet at our fingertips, meaning that a lot of the time we can get caught up in our own little world. What we are doing, what our best friend is doing, even whatever the hell the Kardashians are up to these days can totally distract us and get us stuck in this tiny little place we create for ourselves.
We usually don’t have the desire to leave it. We don’t want to wake up and make real connections with real people. We want to stay there, we want to live in the reality we make for ourselves, no matter how diluted it is. Why is that?
Why don’t we decide to look up once in a while?
It’s easier not to focus on the reality of a situation. It’s simpler than the complicated world filled with hurt, violence, and tragedy. In our world we can be madly in love with the guy of our dreams, when in reality he thinks your best friend is the hottest thing that has ever walked the earth. It’s straight up fantasy and we are in love with it. We don’t have to think about the fact that we are killing our planet or that our government is made up of a bunch of crazies. We can focus instead on what Megan is wearing on her trip to Paris or how hot Alex looks in that picture with his cat.
We don’t want to feel small. If you’ve ever been on an airplane or stood next to the giant skyscrapers in New York City, you understand the feeling of tininess. It’s not always a bad thing. Getting a new perspective on the world can really be eye-opening but it’s also terrifying for a lot of people. We take pictures on iPhones  and make them smaller than they are meant to be so that we feel big again. We all want to feel like we matter enough to change the world. We all want to be important to the world and in our little bubble, we can be.
We don’t want to have to connect with each other. We are safe away from people. Facebook gives us the illusion that we have hundreds of friends and Instagram makes us feel famous when we hit a hundred likes but none of that is real. It’s just another piece of the puzzle we are trying to stay in and call life. We don’t want to have to put in the effort to actually talk to someone about their day face to face.
It’s no one else’s. We were taught growing up to share our toys and if you had siblings like me, that was a very important lesson. However no one really likes it. We want our things to be ours. Which is why our own world is so important to us. This is why relationships are hard. We don’t want to share our world with other people but to have a truly great relationship, we have to let them in a little bit.
The only problem with our small world is that we can’t live in it forever. It’s like a dream. You always have to wake up to reality at some point. If we never take a second to look at what is really happening, we can never actually help anything. Life can’t be like the fairytales. Not everyone can get the storybook life. So wake the f*ck up already.
Featured image via Taryn Elliott on Pexels
