a success-less normal human
It's so hard to be just normal. I don't mean normal like smoothed out, boring Spongebob Squarepants that utters the words, "Hi, how are ya" every time you pass by him.
No I'm talking about normal as in, someone who lives life. Yup. That's it. Here I'm caught up in the notion that I have to become the next "xyz" person to have made my stay here worthwhile. It's as though I have to justify my position in life and my qualification to be at this "prestigious" school. Because I'm here because there's something extraordinary about me right? Because I have the potential to change the world? Honestly I think every person has that potential but that's another story. Coming here has made me feel so pressured and so suffocated. I love it because I've met the people I now cherish, but I still feel this need to justify. I feel as though I have to justify and prove myself to the world. But why? Why do I need to do that? Why do I need to land an amazing internship and travel to a foreign land to set me on a path to be "successful"? Whatever "successful" even means.
Okay wait let's talk about what successful means. What the FUCK DOES it mean anyway? What is success? Becoming president? I don't think we can call it that anymore. Making a lot of money? That has a lot to do with where and to whom you are born though so let's move on. Your status? But who really cares? How many people know your name? Sure but how many of those people could you go to when you're having a shitty day? How many of those people actually care about who you are, what thoughts race through your mind, and what existential qualms you're experiencing? How many of them will handle your drunk ass when you stumble in at 2 am with tears streaming down your face with a bottle of Moscato in your hand? How many of those Facebook friends truly "like" you and what you stand for? Do you even know what they stand for in life? So let's scratch that out.
What's success?
What's success? Why are we all striving to be successful in life? (Maybe you're not and I'm just projecting on to everyone else. Let's go with the latter.)
I'm gonna say success is people and happiness. It's kind of generic but I think it's generic for a reason. It's not about HOW many people you know, but WHO you know. And no this isn't some ploy to tell you that your world will be enlightened when you "network." It's about the quality of people you know that you can entrust with a piece of your life.
It's happiness because I think happiness is the hardest thing to hold onto. Money? Sure you could make a case that it's elusive and that it's hard earned but I'm not in a place to think that all income and wealth comes from hard work. A lot of it has to do with what kind of capital you grew up with and where you lived.
But I digress.
I don't know what success truly is but I know what it is not to me. It's not about how many likes you have on Instagram or how many places you can say you've visited or how many people you know or how many connections you have or how much money you have.
So I don't know where I was going with this blog post but I guess it's because I wanted to jot down why I think that being normal is hard. "Normal" as in human.
I GOT IT.
It's really hard to be human. It's hard to be a human being that makes mistakes and that doesn't know what she's (because I am a girl) doing in life. It's hard to fail and admit that to yourself. It's hard to be human. We're expected now to be superhuman and do everything under the sun with minimal amount of sleep. We're expected to travel everywhere and do everything and eat everything and consume pretty much all the knowledge out there. We're not expected to just be leisurely and spend your time laying on the grass with the sun beating down on you as you consume the world, not your textbook or your social media.
It's hard to be human. We all put on this facade that we're okay and that we have nothing to talk about. We pretend behind our screens that we're above the lowliness of being a normal human that does everything wrong and basically knows how to do nothing. We pretend that we have it all together when really we go home and basically plop on the floor because we don't know what the heck just happened. We pretend that we're always happy because that's what's expected of us. We pretend to be knowledgeable because it'd be a crime to ask questions that seem stupid.
It's hard to be human. It's hard to be "normal."