They make you feel seen and heard every time
You know, whenever you read someone’s story — be it on their blog, their linkedin post, the instagram story, or anywhere, and you feel a part of you being described there, that feeling of connection and relatability makes you feel valid for your actions, feelings and emotions you were finding to get from people around you, is my friend a miracle in today’s life.
Miracle, because everything — when you see someone succeeding, someone going gym every day, someone waking up at 5:00 am consistently, someone running marathons, someone earning in crores, and someone always looking so pretty and aesthetic, you deeply feel so behind, alone, isolated, and bad for yourself every day.
Perfect pictures are for performative goals. They are perfect online because they can’t afford to be seen as anything less than that. Those perfect pictures from perfect angles are actually trying to hide many blemishes, dark spots, and unevenness that everyday life throws at us.
And poor us! We believe in the perfectly captured, edited, filtered, and carefully curated corners of someone’s grid, as it is the reality of life.
The reality is, humanness comes with a lot of insecurities, confusion, failures, tiredness, hopelessness, slow days, mood swings, low periods, edgy feelings, anxiety, stress, and nerve-wracking, vulnerable moments as well. And that, my friend, is not pretty and aesthetic. That is bad, ugly, cruel, silly, confused, sad, with a generous amount of existential crisis. And we feel like we are alone.
No, we are not. We are not alone. Yes, a 10-step skincare routine may have a million views online, but you also have the stories where people openly share about their bad skin days.
When someone shares their raw, real, personal, mostly unpopular, and normal stories of spending weekends at home, Netflixing, reading, gardening, and living through the days instead of performing, I feel more connected to those stories naturally.
And I think that is what connection requires. Simple truth. Simple ways. Simple acts. Everyday life. Mundane days. Fleeting moments. Us. And our stories.
There is a strange connectedness in everyday stories of people you are not connected to in any way. And maybe that’s a shared connection we possess as humans.
So simple, so subtle, so powerful.
Srishti Kumari 