The highlight reel. Your moments of glory, what you choose to share with the world. The things we share because they look glamorous or exciting and while they capture the reality of the moment, rarely do they capture the reality of everyday life. On my most recent trip home, I was talking to a family member who made a comment along the lines that my social media made my life in New York "just seem like a total dream". And she wasn't wrong. My social media does make New York seem like a paradise where everything is full of exciting adventures where nothing ever goes wrong. And my life in New York IS fantastic. It is an adventure bigger than I could have imagined for myself. But, what my social media fails to capture are the moments that make me a real person. The moments that aren't so great or exciting, and if I'm being honest, some moments that are actually really hard. We tend to not share the less than perfect with people because since we have the ability to control our public image through social media, we tend to only broadcast the times where we're crushing the game. But for every post at Fashion Week or in Central Park or Times Square, there was probably a moment where I was stressed about a test or terribly missing home or feeling unsure of myself and my ability to succeed.

Now, I understand that it isn't optimal to share our not so hot moments with the world for a few reasons. For starters, I know I at least tend to keep these moments to myself because I don't want to worry others or bum them out. But to be completely honest, often it's a pride thing. I choose to keep my bad days to myself because I don't want people to think I can't handle the decision I made to move up here. But in doing this, I'm only doing myself a disservice. If what we're after in this life is a relationship with those we hold dear, we won't achieve that through facades. Relationships are between real people-their good, their bad, and everything in between. Relationships don't exist between facades.

I'm not advocating that we all start posting our worst days and every mundane or awful moment on Instagram or broadcast our feelings of inadequacy to the entire world every time we feel them. But I am saying that we have to be careful to understand that there is SO much more to people than what they put on their highlight reel. When we fall under the illusion that a person is entirely comprised of their moments of glory, we fail to see them as a real person with whom we can enter into genuine and caring relationship. Often, this can only deepen our own feelings of inadequacy because we feel like a lifestyle of the caliber of another is unattainable. Not only does the lifestyle seem unattainable, the person themselves can seem unattainable and then we shy away from getting to know people that could really impact our hearts and minds for the better. We have to realize that the grass really does always seem greener on the other side. For every person whose life you envy because of the fraction of it to which you're privy via your phone or computer screen, there is someone who feels the same about your life.

We have to be careful to remember that just as we have our mundane and less than fantastic moments, so does everyone else. And equally as important to remember, is that just as they have their exciting, picture-perfect days, we have those too and we can't discredit those moments. Our everyday might seem monotonous to us, but a dream to someone else and vice versa.

I think it's great to have platforms to share life's best and brightest. But I also think it would be really cool if we could start being more real with people and not be afraid of doing so. I think we might be surprised with how liberating it feels to be unapologetically our most genuine self and in turn get to love those around us with a love that's all encompassing, a love for who they are in their highlight reel, but mostly a love for everything they are outside of it.