Letters To A Blind Girl #4
That was such a powerful message and very relevant right now, as self-acceptance is the one thing I think we are all very much struggling to achieve. It used to be easy to feel inadequate if you were part of a minority. These days, our online world makes it easy for ANYONE to feel inadequate and isolated in a little bubble, looking out on a fame-and-fortune world to which we do not feel we belong. We have started to perceive “normal” to be a minority and now we are all striving for extraordinary.
And yet, (as you say) we have also found our comfort online, through like-minded people who are just like us. I guess it is all to do with how much we can relate to those we find.
As people without full sight, we may dream of living a life where we can drive, where we can recognise somebody from the other side of the room, where we can read books, magazines and road signs like anybody else around us. It is hard to accept that so many others have things that we do not and possibly don’t even seem to realise how lucky they are.
In 2018, as any kind of human being, we envy others for things like their huge following on social media, the YouTube videos in which they show off their millionaire mansions, the success people are having in their lives that we can only dream about.
In short, whatever we want - big or small - we all want MORE than we have.
This thought cycle can be extremely toxic to us, however, because it perpetuates the notion that we are not good enough the way we are right now.
Perhaps this is why we are finding self-acceptance so impossible as a society.
Perhaps comparison pushes us to grow, develop and keep upping our game.
As my Mum is always reminding me, “we all have some form of disability”. Our greatest disability and one of the most debilitating, of course, is when we cannot accept ourselves as enough. It is an invisible disability, but it is a dangerous one for anybody to suffer from.
It is strange to see our lives from somebody else’s perspective. Sometimes it can be very enlightening. I remember when I was 18 years old at university, after having a week of feeling pretty sorry for myself, when one of my flatmates at the time said something which has always stuck with me. A few of us were talking about life and how difficult it can be. I think I made some solemn comment on my own situation. My flatmate exhaled a soft wisp of laughter and said, “Yeah right, what do you have to be down about?” This was interesting. Where all I could see were all the bad things in my life, all he could see were the positive parts. He honestly believed I had everything going for me and it made me question my own perception.
In a world where we have so many outlets, do you think comparison is helping us or hurting us? Do you think it is detrimental to our own self-acceptance?
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