Day 127: Dream Killer
We live in an age that is filled with social media. In our digital era, we are constantly pulled in by the greatest and latest social media apps. From Instagram to Twitter to Snapchat to Tik Tok. Hours a day can be wasted with endless scrolling that is rather pointless in the grand scheme of things. While there is nothing overly bad about such apps, I've recently discovered an area that is detrimentally affected by these platforms.
I love social media, I think it is a wonderful invention that allows people to connect with people and share their message globally. However, I know there are several downsides to the tool. One of the biggest that comes to mind is the amount of time spent just scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. If you're being honest with yourself, you may realize that a lot of the time spent on your phone is quite pointless.
Yet the bigger problem is quite simply put this: social media kills dreams.
I had this realization late last night after a day spent trying and really failing to make sense of what I wanted to do in the future. I have always been a person that can dream easily and come up with billions of ideas for the future. But recently, I've struggled with coming up with ideas.
Social media has so many benefits that should not be ignored in such a modern period of time. There should also be a large consideration for the effect social media is having on us. If you're like most people, as soon as your eyes are open they are glued to the screen of a phone. Then for the rest of the day it is a constant struggle between putting the phone down and picking it right back up.
From the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep, social media is right there in front of it. We are constantly seeing into other people's lives, the perfect aspects of them anyhow. We are constantly watching other people accomplish their dreams, whatever they might be. And we are constantly being fed ideas for our lives based on what others are doing.
We are being fed other people's lives 24/7 and that has an affect. Our ideas are no longer our ideas. Our goals are no longer our goals. Our dreams are no longer our dreams. All because we see what other people are doing and we begin to believe if we could only do those things, then we would be that healthy, successful, wealthy, etc.
We begin to base what we want in life on what others are doing. This is not a healthy practice. We are ignoring the dreams and callings we uniquely have for something someone is already doing. Our thoughts go from the things we truly want to do to we have to do these certain things because we want to be like the people doing them.
The dreams we have become stifled and our imagination is restricted within the limitations of what we see others doing. No we don't really want to be pursue that type of job, but we can see how successful they are at it. No we don't really want to live in that city, but we can see how beautiful their lives are because they live there. No we don't really want to do anything we see on social media, but because we see it we don't have to do the hard work of figuring out what we really want.
Pursuing what everyone else is pursuing is the easy route. We don't have to work on dreaming and brainstorming because we can already see what we want. We don't have to work on planning because we can see the path they took that will lead us there. When we follow someone else's path, it will be easier, but it will not be fulfilling.
Our lives will never be like theirs because they are their own person and we can never be exactly like them. We would only be a copy at best. we need to learn to break free.
As I mentioned above, I realized this last night so I don't really have a solution yet. But I realize that it will take constant awareness. It will take dedication to removing unnecessary time of social media and necessary dreaming sessions. We have to get back to who we are and back to what our dreams are, not the dreams we see on social media, the dreams that really light our soul and our soul alone on fire. Those dreams are the ones we need to come back to.
Until Next Time,
Lillian Merritt