The word “facade” is defined as “a false, superficial or artificial appearance or effect”. While often used to describe a building’s exterior, it’s also used to define people’s obsessive desire to create, and sadly, support a myth about their life.
We use heavy cosmetics, altering surgeries, hair dye, fad diets and clothing to help conceal from the world our real earthly age.
We burden ourselves with credit card debt, auto loans and home loans with the misguided notion that material possessions will convey to others that we’re wealthier and more successful than we really are.
We exude an air of over confidence, dominance and conceit at home and at work in an attempt to hide the demons of insecurity which plague our everyday life.
Where’s the danger in all this you might ask?
It’s important to remember that myths are nothing more than “an imaginary or fictitious thing or person”. When people – especially those flaunting themselves on social media platforms – begin supporting a myth about their life, they’re supporting something imaginary and fictitious. In short, they’re living a lie.
Where the danger comes in is simple really. Reality is only known by the myth teller – not those lacking self-confidence and self-worth, who are naively taken by the story being told.
Suddenly, they begin to attack themselves over the shortcomings they see when measured against those who appear “perfect” online. They become unnecessarily critical of themselves – mocking their appearance, their accomplishments, their very place in this world based on nothing more than a fictitious storyline manufactured to elicit envy and jealousy from others in an attempt to increase their own self-worth.
In Fredrik Backman’s book Anxious People, he says, “The truth of course is that if people really were as happy as they look on the Internet, they wouldn’t spend so much damn time on the Internet, because no one who’s having a really good day spends half of it taking pictures of themselves. Anyone can nurture a myth about their life if they have enough manure, so if the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, that’s probably because it’s full of shit.”
Sadly, far too many of us allow people’s myth about their life to cloud our own vision from what’s real and what’s imaginary. We create theories in our head that somehow their lives must be better than ours based on nothing more than a well-posed photograph undoubtedly meant to hide what’s factual.
Regardless of what superficiality our eyes might in fact see in appearance or financial success – especially on social media – the fact of the matter is no one is perfect and no one is void of the challenges and struggles this world bestows upon all of us.
Don’t allow the myth tellers of the world to convince you otherwise.
wow,… this is very thought providing, thank you!!
…. and I thought I was just well fertilized!! When in reality I am full of ___!