We are constantly under sensory overload. Facebook allows you to follow the lives of friends and acquaintances with ease, and you can fill in the gaps of what they're not posting about with your own assumptions of how their lives "must" be going. You tell yourself that they're probably living a life of universal bliss and experiencing everything in a sort of stark clarity that you can only imagine. Everyone just seems brighter and bolder through the lens of social media, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or something else entirely, they're all means for people to frame their lives in the precise way they want to.
It's so easy to wonder if you've made the right choices and whether you're going in the right direction. Not many post their flaws and the more bland aspects of their daily lives online, so it can feel strangely isolating because suddenly the more banal aspects of your daily life are suddenly in the forefront of your mind. The times in which you didn't feel incredibly confident and the times you couldn't go out because you had to work are unflinchingly prominent in your mind, and you wonder if you should have done x or y or z.
"What if I'd joined track? What if I'd stuck with art? What if I'd learned guitar? What if I'd picked up cooking?"
Social media acts as a means for people to catch a glimpse into how different their lives could have been had they developed a different set of skills than they'd initially chosen to by seeing the skills developed in other people. When someone else posts about their experience in an activity you decided not to pursue further for lack of time, it makes you wonder whether you made the right choices. After all, everything seems so rosy through the right lens on Instagram.
But it is impossible to do everything. Even if you did do everything you see on your Facebook timeline and made the exact same choices as the most glamorous person on Instagram, who's to say that you would like living their life? Your own unique experiences shape your likes and dislikes and how you would react in a given situation, so it's absolutely impossible to use someone else as a template for what choices you should have made and should make in the future.
After all, it's the uniqueness and uncertainty of life that make it an adventure.
