Perspectives

Entering my twenty-first year on planet Earth with an honorary degree in being single isn’t so easy. Even the first month of it was already filled with news of engagements, new relationships among friends and a guy I had a teeny tiny crush on having a girlfriend. Jokes on me. It is, even more, overwhelming in social media like Instagram when I see all these lovey-dovey pictures and captions about couples’ undying love for each other. Some days, I win the battles with my overthinking mind and give no space for comparison with other people that ultimately leads to feelings of despair. Some days, I don’t and it feels like all hope I have for love is forever lost. Upward social comparison is what we usually do. It basically means that we compare ourselves with someone who is doing better than us in a certain something that leads us to feel bad about ourselves and have our self-esteem threatened. However, it is not like comparison is only specified to our love lives like the example...

              We live in an information-dense world where we’re continuously bombarded with so much of notifications in real life and especially through the greatest discovery of 21st century, social media. Facebook showing off your friend at a vacation spot; Instagram highlighting your colleague’s candlelight dinner with her fiancée; Twitter show-casting your humorous college mate posting about his sudden promotion. Sounds familiar? Ever reflected the aftermath of encountering such information? How does it make you feel about yourself? Like everyone else is better off having the time of their lives while you’re picking yourself from and cleaning yourself of the mess you are. It is the easiest to be ungrateful especially in this era where you can consciously choose to scroll down your feed to make you feel crappy about yourself. It is the easiest to be ungrateful when you can beat yourself up when you failed to achieve the impossible standards...