I recently met my client over brunch and was happy to find him in a happy space and doing well in life. Coming from an affluent family, his conversations always gives me a glimpse into the world of some of the wealthiest people and their lifestyle. How they think, how they earn, and what influences them to make their world look like one giant shiny disco ball.
Interestingly, his sister in the USA works with an online company that buys and sells ultra-expensive bags. I mean these are one hell of a luxury bag, sold by celebs and elites of the world and bought by aspiring celebs and elites of the world. Being a woman, it took only 10 seconds for me to fall in love with the stuff on the website. I mean these are highly indulging bags priced from 2000 dollars onwards. For a moment, it did bring out the feeling of my inability to conquer these desires. My mind started questioning why we aspire for things in life. Why do we go beyond the need for the basic functionality of a thing and go for the conformity of certain society-defined standards and status brackets? Why did this website cause a feeling of lack inside me?
I go to the gym and I find a girl with a perfect body, skin, and hair and I automatically get into a self-critical conversation- body shaming myself for being fat, tanned, and having hair like a wet duck. Why there are immediate sensations of self-loathing and cravings to opt for solutions that will give me a perfectly symmetrical face, nose, and colored skin? Why there is this confusion about self-worth with body image?
I often hear people buying bigger houses in Mumbai and renovating them like the palaces of Edinburgh. I mean why? Probably they have NRI siblings or friends living a European lifestyle to showcase they are being at par with their success in India. Why is the upper middle class of our country trying to imitate the lifestyle of Bollywood celebs and our celebs trying to look like the shaikhs of Dubai? Whereas, Dubai wants to look like another USA and wishes to bring western labels to the country selling the stories of modern living.
It’s difficult to comprehend, but I think the whole fight of our existence is no more with self but with this mental deficiency of social comparison. The social comparison makes us believe that anything that is defined and well accepted by a large number of people is called a high standard of living, a perfect body, or an ideal life of a person or family. Our whole journey of living has become about earning this social currency. The desire to get positive impressions among our friends, family, and colleagues to feel included. Somewhere, the desire for social approval has become fundamental to human motivation in our society. The concern here is social approval means changing or challenging yourself to become worthy in the eyes of a group of people. If we are successful to stack up well with others, we tend to have higher self-esteem and when we stack less, we have low self-esteem. I have personally noticed an experience of a shift in my self-worth when I see or hear someone in my network achieving this social currency first. The feeling drowns me in web series of comparisons leading to disappointments either with myself or my family.
In situations like this, it is important to question, who in the world has defined that one particular color of skin type, body shape, spouse, child, country, money in your bank, or large houses and shiny cars are the ultimate aim of reaching your satisfaction. Why we are sold these ideal stories of some people through movies, books, social media, or events defining it as the ultimate happiness of life? Why not an imperfect body, single parent, tiny house, special needs children, or incapability of a man or woman to give everything to his family are also considered ideal stories of social approvals. Why our self-worth needs social currency to prove our happiness? Questioning is important to find out our own values and choices in life. It helps us anchor our little boat in this huge ocean of so-called ideal stories of the world.
This mental deficiency is hardwired in us and we are likely to get engaged in social comparison with the internet being there for a long time, I foresee our future generation getting more aggressive in contributing to the ideal stories of the world. However, one way to remain sane is by being aware there is always a bigger fish in the ocean. That means no matter how rich, attractive, intelligent, smart, or how much you know, there is always someone who can top that.
