Why do we compare our real life with other people’s best moments?

Sometimes all it takes is a quick look at the phone.

Someone is sitting by the sea. Someone has just started a new job. Another person shows a perfect breakfast, a new home or an evening where everyone seems unbelievably happy.

Meanwhile, we might be sitting with a cup of coffee between laundry, emails and an entirely ordinary Monday, and one small thought appears:

Why doesn’t my life look like that?

We see moments – not whole days

We actually know this.

Hardly anyone shows every tired morning, every uncertainty, every argument, every boring shopping trip and the hour in which nothing interesting happens at all.

We are more likely to show the sunset than the search for a parking space before it. The finished cake rather than the kitchen afterwards. The beach day on holiday and not necessarily the argument about who packed the suitcase badly.

There is nothing wrong with that. I do the same. A beautiful picture is simply nicer to look at than the mess beside it.

It only becomes a problem when we forget that it is a selection.

Sometimes we compare our whole life with someone else’s most beautiful moment.

der uNi

The comparison is unfair from the start

On our own side, we know everything.

The doubts. The bills. The things that are not working yet. The plans that were postponed again. The days when we do not feel especially successful, interesting or photogenic.

With other people, we often see the result.

Not the ten attempts before it. Not the rejection. Not the bad week. Not the uncertainty behind the smile.

So we compare our complete rough draft with somebody else’s finished picture.

Of course we lose that comparison.

Even a beautiful life is full of ordinary Tuesdays

I think I forget that myself sometimes.

A good life does not feel like a highlight every day. Most of it consists of fairly ordinary hours.

Working. Shopping. Cooking. Waiting. Tidying up. Answering messages. Tiredness. Small worries. Small joys.

And between those things are the moments we later remember.

A conversation. A journey. A song. An evening when everything suddenly felt easy. A person who was there at exactly the right time.

The special moments probably would not feel special if every day looked like them.

Sometimes envy can tell us something

That is why I do not want to treat the feeling as entirely bad.

If something about another person repeatedly bothers me, I can ask myself: What is it that I actually want?

Is it really the car? Or do I want more freedom?

Is it really the holiday? Or do I simply need a break?

Is it their professional success? Or do I finally want to build something of my own?

Then the comparison may become less of a bad mood and more of a piece of information about ourselves.

A little less shop window

We probably do not need to declare social media evil or throw the phone into a lake.

What helps me more is remembering what I am actually looking at:

a picture, a moment, a selection.

Not the whole life behind it.

And if I notice that scrolling is giving me more of a feeling of not being enough than any real enjoyment, I am allowed to close it.

Our own life does not happen on the screen anyway.

It happens exactly where we are sitting, walking, laughing, working, doubting and eventually experiencing another moment that perhaps even we will take a beautiful photo of.

Who or what do you sometimes catch yourself comparing your life with – and what might you really be longing for underneath?

Marco, der uNi