Whenever someone asks you the question, where do you see yourself in five years or in any random amount of time in the future, maybe an interviewer or some "well-wishing" relative in a family function in front of a bunch of similar "well-wishers", what's your immediate response? What's the thought that immediately pops up in your mind? Is it a powerful position in a firm? Following you passion? Living the dream? Building your own family?
Well I only ask because I am genuinely curious, cause everytime I am asked this question I just have one thought running in my head- Nothing, but everything. Seems contradictory? Welcome to my life.
It's difficult living in two extremes, one where you want the whole world and the other where you are completely alright with absolutely nothing. Neither state is ideal.
It was always like this. Being a part of the millennial gen, I got exposed to both lifestyles, pre and post-feminism. When I was young, that is, in the pre feminism era, (don't get me wrong feminism was there way before I was born and when I say pre and post I just mean before and after it entered my life), whenever guests arrived at our house I was the one sent to serve the coffee in a tray. I enjoyed it like any kid who is given some "adultish" work, made me feel important, but the thing was even if I spilt one drop in the tray I would ask for a redo, to do it from the beginning. The tray had to be cleaned, coffee filled again and everything had to be returned to its original state.
This is the all or nothing conundrum. You do something and you have to be the best otherwise you can be nothing, cause it doesn't matter anyway. It will definitely be labelled as a toxic mentality just like most things these days and I agree cause in the long run, following this could end in two different ways- either you become a successful perfectionist or you end up being a serial procrastinator with a crushing fear of failure. Both are nuts.
I am sure you can figure out where I belong with my writing style.
Like every other person, I blame social media for my lack of self-control. I spend an unhealthy amount of time on Insta on a daily basis scrolling through reels. When I scroll through them, I feel like I am more connected with the world. I can sit in my room and look around at what's going on at a Taylor Swift concert with just a scroll, I can travel around the world and see all the beauty it has to offer with just a scroll up. I can see the finest dining areas, how rich people live, their different types of clothes like party wear, ball dress, their parents who say I love you to them and kiss them goodnight, their boyfriends and girlfriends who buy them a Lamborghini for their birthdays and propose to them in Paris, I can see people enjoying at concerts, people going on trips, following their hobbies, painting, getting likes and views and making more money, I can see everything. It feels like I am a part of something so great and accessible.
But at the same time it changes nothing for me on a personal level. Seeing happy people when you are content is not a big deal. But seeing happy people when you are unhappy with the way things are going in your life is a different kind of hurt. Maybe it's all fake and life isn't the rosy picture they paint on social media. Or maybe it's true. But the bottom line is, it doesn't matter. Once you see it, it's game over. All you care about is how much there is to see and feel and experience in the world around you and how little you are doing and how little you would be able to do even if you gave it your all. To do certain things we need hard cash. To get cash we need to work a bit. To have enough cash to live out the lifestyle we envision for ourselves we need to really work our asses off. But sitting in the couch and having access to the images of all the beautiful places and experiences of the world in you palm, you just feel that no matter how hard you work you can't have it all.
So you just don't do anything at all. You don't put down the phone and do something productive cause you know you can't get that lifestyle, you feel you can't level up, so you choose the immediate momentary pleasure and continue scrolling on and reap nothing cause you have sown nothing.
We all have a great deal of self awareness these days thanks to all the posts and memes about everything under the sun. But when it comes to doing something about our issues, we ignore them studiously, hoping that they go away somewhere by themselves.
We see so many people doing so many great things around us. We keep seeing them. They show it in YouTube shorts or an Insta reel. It's just sixty to ninety seconds of our time. So we think that success is just as fast. Except Kobe, no one really tells us about the whole process, step-by-step, cause they think everyone will become successful. They overestimate us and fear us unnecessarily while we just scroll through reel after reel aimlessly, hoping that some stroke of luck will come our way, or some distant rich relative leaves us a huge inheritance and passes away and someday we can make our "success story" reel too. Fate laughs at us and life does what it has to do.
I started with first person ended with something else. Is this way of writing correct? I don't really bother to check it. Because once again it's all or nothing right?