In college, we spend so much time looking at others, whether that be looking with admiring eyes at the cute guy or girl in the library or looking with judgmental eyes at the girl in the bar with the too short skirt dancing on the table. We spend hours looking at social media, studying who is doing what in whose Snapchat and who liked whose Instagram picture. We look at other people so much, and we have such a strong desire to know what they are doing and what they are thinking that it becomes ridiculous. For example, I promise you I have heard someone begin to question why this guy added them on Facebook when he doesn’t follow them on Instagram.
We find ourselves so subconsciously obsessed with looking at others that we begin laying judgement on the slighting movements or choices that someone makes. We have become so infatuated with others and so caught up in what we need to do and how we need to act that we have lost happiness in just being.
A like on an Instagram picture is not enough to make us feel secure, now we have to watch the rate of how long it takes and which posts we get likes on in order to feel like society has given us the stamp of approval.
If we spent half that time worrying about the choices that we make than we do on thinking of the most clever caption for our Instagram picture, then our generation wouldn't be labeled as the ones who only take selfies. I mean, how many pictures from a wine night with a caption that reads “I won’t WINE about being your date” have you seen?
I have seen people throw their self-respect out the window in order to get a like. Just like every other college student in the country, we have just returned from spring break. This week was not just a week spent at the beach with about 300 of my closest friends making questionable decisions, but it provided me with the perfect example of watching people do just about anything for a like.
This break I found myself taking in what was going on around me a lot more than other times because as you get older, the excitement of spring break sadly starts to drift away. I sat back in my $12 Walmart chair, amazed by the things I saw. I thought my face was going to be stuck in a permanent shocked look for the rest of my life. If I had a dollar for each time I saw a Yeti butt picture (every college student knows what that is) being taken, I could have been a millionaire.
The reality is that our choices fall short, and no matter how often we are encouraged to make the right ones, nine out of 10 times we chose the wrong one. Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat have become our frenemy and have increased our stalker tendencies. This approval-seeking behavior is consuming our time and draining our energy. The only person who we need to impress is ourselves. Wayne Dyer once said, “When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself as someone who needs to judge.” Let go of the need to control what other people think of you, and you will find peace with your own self.
