How I Stopped Comparing My Life to Everyone Else’s Highlights
At 10:52 PM, I was lying in bed with my phone one inch from my nose, watching everyone else have a perfect Saturday.
Maya had been to a lake. Jonah had baked bread that had risen like it had somewhere important to be. Two girls from my grade sat on a rooftop in matching sweaters, laughing with their whole faces.
My own Saturday had been a pile of laundry, a library fine, and a sandwich eaten over the sink.
“Everyone is living their life. You are just waiting for yours.”
Why does everyone else seem so happy?
Am I the only one who feels behind?
What is wrong with my life?
A highlight reel against my whole movie
I told Zoe on Monday, and she did not say, “Don’t compare yourself.” I am grateful, because that sentence has never worked on anyone.
Instead, she said, “Can I see your phone?”
I handed it over, a little suspicious. Her own camera roll was a disaster: forty blurry pictures of her thumb, a cat that was mostly ear, a sandwich, another sandwich, and one photo of the sky taken, as she explained, “by accident, while crying about a math test.”
“This is my real Saturday,” she said. “You know what I posted?”
“The cat?”
“The one good photo of the cat. You see highlights. I see the other thirty-nine.”
I laughed so hard the boy in front of us turned around.
· · ·
Behind the scenes
That afternoon, on the library steps, Zoe drew a line down the middle of a notebook page. At the top of the left side she wrote What I want to take. On the right side she wrote What I actually take.
“Fill in the right side,” she said. “Not mean things. Just true things people never post.”
It was strange how fast the page filled up. Maya: the six photos where her eyes were closed. The long, boring drive to the lake. The sunburn. Jonah: the three loaves that didn’t rise. The rooftop girls: probably a fight about who got the better seat.
I looked at the page and felt something quiet settle in me. These were not lies. They were just the parts of life that never get a spotlight. My own Saturday, with its laundry and its sandwich over the sink, had been completely normal, which meant it was real.
My own two columns
I still scroll. But now I have a small habit: before I put the phone down, I ask, What is the behind-the-scenes of this picture?
And then I write one line in my own notebook, on a page I titled My real Saturday. Laundry. A good sandwich. I laughed at lunch. I finished my book.
Read back, it looks like a pretty good life, only without a filter.
Last week, Maya stopped me in the hallway and said, “I love your sweater. I always wish I could pull off blue.” I stared at her for a very long time. She had wished I had something. She, who had been to the lake.
It turns out everyone has a highlight reel, and everyone is watching someone else’s. I just stopped taking mine as the only measure.
With love,
Lina
