Non-Kodak Moments
Over the last two weeks I’ve just been made really
aware of the fact that you can really start despising your life based on how
you see other people’s lives portrayed. Social media is basically just for the
Kodak moments. The moments that are great and worth capturing. When the
lighting is just right, the make-up is on fleek, the outfit is popping. But you
don’t know what happened five minutes before that picture was taken, or what
season that person is in.
If you pay too much attention on what people post on
social media then you will make yourself an expert on their lives. All of a
sudden you know what their favourite meal is, where they go to school, what
time they wake up, who they are in a relationship with. And you can spend so
much time just trying to keep up with them and trying to dissect their lives
that you literally spend more time and effort on their lives while you neglect
yours. You can’t look out of your
kitchen window every morning while drinking your coffee, and look at your
neighbour’s garden and just ponder on how gorgeous their rose bush is when you
haven’t watered yours in five weeks. It doesn’t make sense.
Because the truth is that you weren’t standing at your
window when they were watering it, you didn’t see when they were pruning it,
you weren’t there every time they got pricked by the thorns. Because you get to
pick what time you stand at the window, you get to pick which scenes you see.
So don’t be taken by the window through which you see other people’s lives, while
you neglect your own.
Some of us need to take a break from social media, a break from analysing other people's lives. Just
so we can take our eyes off what other people are doing and relocate ourselves
in our own lives. And even if someone’s life looks just a bit better than
yours, just know that they had to overcome something in order to be where they
are now. Let us learn to love our lives, even in the non-Kodak moments. Because
that's what makes the Kodak moments even sweeter.