Feeling lost when you buy the culture in the 21st century

Meg
4 min readJul 5, 2020

Existiential questioning and cultivating real meaning

Photo by Valeriia Bugaiova on Unsplash

In this modern era, do you experience feeling lost and a background discomfort or despair?

Well, you’re certainly not alone.

This technology and social media in particular, born out of noble intentions.
Birthed to bring us together and connect. However, with this mass connectivity, it brings about an enormous amount of options, distraction and pressure. Now, its not all negative and as an idealistic person, I must address the positive side. Social media is bringing awareness to social issues, countering culture and beauty standards. There are beautiful people crafting their talent and art through these platforms.

However, it would be shameful to not address that as a society we have become more superifical. Doing what looks good as opposed to what feels good and truly connecting with others. We are addicts and slaves to these supercomputers and have observed in myself and others’ this very ailment.

It is not a coincidence that mental health has been on the rise and correlated with increased social media use. When we are constantly comparing our life to everyone elses’ highlight reel. I have seen individuals drive sepcifically for a photo of the sunrise one morning and once they had their picture they had left. Now this is not to judge the behaviour but to really dig deep within myself and realize they are doing this to feel connected and be “seen” online.

Everything looks great online. Just like a resume, we can perfect and scuplt the best version of ourselves. Of course, we will not show or mention our messy apartment because we’ve been depressed for weeks and isolated ourselves. In reality, everyone has stories and flaws and the sooner we understand that is what is beautiful about us.

We are dying to been seen and heard on the internet and yet losing that reality in our day to day. A beautiful reference is the term “Kinsugi” In Japanese culture, when an object has a crack or noticable flaws in it instead of discarding the piece or trying to hide the flaw, it is painted with gold, silver or platinum in order to incorporate the history of the object. That is how we should all view ourselves and therefore, humanity.

In this 21st century, we are prided and recognized on our outward achievements as opposed to learning and putting emphasis on how to be better human beings.

Chasing your goals and dreams should not be viewed as negative, and we should strive to live authentically. Our viewpoint of life needs to go beyond ourselves and our own needs. We are living in a “me” world since the day of conception. School has reinforced it, culture is constantly saying do better in order to “be better” everything from self development, to self help, a major focus on self when we need to expand it to others.

We strive for the checklist of life. We are told to go to school, have a career, buy a house, get married, have kids, save money, retire. If that isn’t where one falls then the main focus could be chasing money and climbing the coporate latter. Rarely, does anyone ever take a moment to be alone and examine some important questions such as: Am I happy? Am I doing this because I genuinely enjoy it and want to or because society/friends/parents has normalized this decision for me?

Are you living your life unexamined?

First step is to be honest with yourself. It is not easy to look within and confront harsh truths. Also, detoxing from social and learning to stop the comparison game along the way. “Comparison is the theif of joy” — Theodore Roosevelt

Creating a world that outwardly looks amazing and free and yet feel so empty inside is the loneliest feeling in the world. Our culture leaves us with limited time to really look inward. We are filled with distractions and it is up to our lifestyle and us how we must move forward. In the famous words of my favourite book, Tuesdays with Morrie “Don’t buy the culture”

We need to place importance on our real life relationships and cultivate friendships with as much importance and attention as the online world. We need to be seen and heard for who we really are, not for who our online bio says. Community is essential, as humans we are wired socially and our intristic nature is to belong. The internet is a great and vast resource to use, not to replace human connection.

When we think about suffering, life and death and everything that happens in between there are many unknowns. I personally that in having faith, we are placed here on earth to experience our soul’s evolution. When we deeply question ourselves, our purpose, what life means, it brings forth a larger meaning to our daily existence. We are simply not meant to go through the motions and just survive.

We can start today, by taking control back and learning yourself, first.

Drop the comparsion game and if you’re feeling brave social media itself. Live for your purpose, exist for others. Show up and be seen. Really experience all the mundane things, without an audience. Create love and art. You’ll be amazed at how much life you were missing by looking at your screen. :)

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Meg

Write about emotions + universal human experience ❣️