Imagine one of your friends posts this picture on her social media.
Ugh, look at her body, you think to yourself. I wish I was as beautiful as her.
The next day, you see she posts this picture with the caption “my unbiological sisters, love you girls”
Look at all her friends, she's so lucky. I wish I had friends like that.
A
few days later, this photo shows up in your feed, with another caption
reading “being in love is the most amazing feeling <3”.
Of course, she has a hot boyfriend too. Can she get any better?
Later that night, you are laying awake thinking about her again.
I wish I was like her. Pretty. Popular. In love. She just has it all.
She's perfect.
Her life is perfect.
The reality is that nobody has the so-called perfect life we hear about all the time.
For the sake of this answer, let's say the hypothetical girl above lost her mother to a terminal illness when she was only 4.
She
feels like she grew up without a mother. Every night, she lays awake
missing the mother she never even knew. She even wishes she was like
you, that she had a mother like you do. She would take a mother over any
amount of friends.
But you don't know that.
She
paints a picture of having the perfect life to others. She doesn't want
anyone else to see the ugly, darker side to her life.
What
I am saying is that everyone is going through their own battle.
Everyone has a dark secret(s). Everyone has something that keeps them up
at night. Everyone has something they would change in their life.
Just
some people hide it more than others. They feel like the only way
people will like them is if they seem perfect, so they only show you the
good bits.
I
once knew a family. They travelled the world, were basically rich, had 2
happy kids and the parents had an amazing relationship.
I
was shocked when I got to know that the mother’s ex-husband murdered
her third child and is behind bars. Their life seemed perfect to an
outsider, but you can only imagine what the family must go through
mentally everyday.
What do people underestimate often?
We underestimate how many people out there are going through something we don't know about.
We underestimate how much the seemingly “perfect” person could be going through deep down.
We underestimate life.
If someone tells you they have a perfect life, well then they're lying.
You can't make assumptions about people only from what you see on the outside.
Always be kind to others. You never know what they might be going through beneath the mask of “perfection”.