With that in place, this week, I want to return to something we’ve touched on in many flavours over the course of this series. The idea of, in some way, measuring yourself against someone else. Let’s take an easy example: a movie star. You can’t get many more two-dimensional projections of a human being these days than that. We see movie stars as people with untold riches, who have luxurious parties, and live the kind of life that many of us would drool over the thought of. Yet what don’t we see? Plenty. We don’t see the moments where they might read something cruel on social media, and it reduces them to tears. We don’t see the insecurities. We don’t see the fear, the worries, the stuff that haunts many of us on a day to day basis. I read lots of times that we shouldn’t have support, empathy or sympathy for famous people, but I’m always puzzled by that. Sure, the riches mitigate things, but only so far. There are still human beings behind the image. Most of us, arguably all of us, project an image of ourselves when we’re with other people. I do wonder how many people in life we really each of us know in a full three-dimensional way, and I’d wager that the list for each of us is quite short (not least because getting to know someone takes time, and we all have a finite amount of that). I’m not suggesting that everyone should know everything about a person, but just make the point that no matter how happy someone may appear on the outside, it’s hard to know for certain if they really are. I’ll go further. You may be someone who puts up such a front, who gets their proverbial armour on to go and do battle with the day. As a result, fewer people really know the real you, and that too has an impact further down the line. That’s bound to catch up with you. Please try and open up to someone, no matter how difficult that may be to do. Thanks, as always, for reading my ramblings. Stay awesome.
