I have seen so many posts lately, of people losing themselves to who they think they need to be in order to be liked or get likes. So many women with perfect makeup, lip fillers, expensive houses, their entire feed is perfect… Everyone tries to look the same as if there’s a mold you can fit into that place you at the top of the social hierarchy. Sometimes I think their lives are perfect. I wonder if they think their lives are perfect. There are also people out there who are extremely vocal about what you should and shouldn’t do. If you didn’t put up the black square years back you didn’t care about black lives and if you don’t speak up about Palestine, you’re a bad person who doesn’t care. If you don’t do what other people think you SHOULD do, you’ll get criticized or cancelled. What happened to taking care of our own lives, doing what WE think is worth our time and energy?
I’m glad I am focused on being myself. Being myself feels like a reward. And every challenge brings forth more of who I am.
I’m glad I don’t give in to the pressure of caring about the “right” thing to avoid being seen as someone who doesn’t care. I know I care. No one has a right to tell me how I should care.
I’m glad I don’t cater to the algorithm or the current social media strategy. I’m glad I don’t play by rules made by others. I’m never at the mercy of either.
I’m glad I never made reels, added music to my posts, or posted 15 slides with two sentences on each slide because “that’s what everyone else does”.
(Yes, these are not big “Palestine examples”, they are seemingly small and insignificant social media examples, but change is often done in those “small” and “seemingly insignificant” situations. If you don’t stand by your truth because “it’s just a small truth” you are teaching yourself that you can in fact ignore yourself. Just look at how many examples I have from my relationship with Instagram. I get countless opportunities to take my truth into account, just as I get countless opportunities to abandon myself.)
I’m glad I steered clear of ending each post with a question to boost engagement. Engagement for the sake of engagement equals noise and noise is worth nothing to me. If I ask questions, it’s because I genuinely want to hear the answers.
I don’t write for likes or followers. I write because I need to write, to process and reflect, and I post because I need my experiences and reflections to be known. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to be seen. Some days I’m grappling with a surprisingly painful sense of “no one understands” and “no one cares”, and in frustration I contemplate deleting my account to never publish a post ever again, but I never do… I write regardless.
In a way it’s strange how much energy we spend on trying to influence others when we could have used it directly towards ourselves. I also get it, we think getting other people to do x, y and z will make us feel more whole. We believe it will make us stop aching. You will encounter people who want you to do what serves them, their priority will not be YOU. I’ve toed the line on Instagram too, wanting people to relieve me from financial stress and emotional pain by buying sessions and recognizing me. I believe it’s in everyone’s best interest to be true to themselves, but it might not be the time, nor does my approach be the right one.
In my eyes, what we need is more guiding each other back to what is true and right for US. Your personal truth is the way to a coherent life and feeling whole, which is what I think we all want.
Gunhild Archer, counselor 