there is only one you

there is something absurd about how much time we spend trying to be like people who aren’t us.

we buy what they buy. we want what they want.

we watch how they live, how they dress, what they eat, where they travel, what they achieve and we start trying to use someone else’s life as a measuring stick for our own.

but there’s the thing.

there is only one you.

that’s not a motivational statement.

it’s a fact.

there has only ever been one person with your collection of experiences, reactions, relationships, disappointments, talents, mistake, humour, fears and strange little things that make you who you are.

so why are we trying to standardize ourselves?

we want to know the right way to live.

the morning routine. the relationships. the career. the body. the age to have achieved certain things.

we keep looking outside of ourselves for instructions to a life that has never been lived before.

maybe that’s why comparison is exhausting.

you’re trying to complete in a game that was never designed for you.

your life may not look like anyone else’s

and it shouldn’t.

maybe your path takes longer. maybe you change your mind. maybe you start something new. maybe you don’t want the thing everyone else seems to want.

who gets to say?

we have become very good at making perfectly good lives feel inadequate simply because they don’t look like someone else’s.

there is no audience

this is the part I find interesting. so much of what we do is unconsciously performed for an audience that may not even exist.

we imagine what people will think. how we’ll be perceived. whether they’ll like or comment.

but most people are too busy with their own lives. they aren’t watching you as closely as you think they are.

which means we may be spending years performing for an audience that isn’t even there.

maybe ask: what if I stopped trying to be a version at all?

what if you were just honest?

honest about what you like. what you don’t like. who you want around you. what you have outgrown. what you’re curious about. what you no longer want to explain. what you want to create.

that kind of honesty changes your life. choice by choice.

don’t waste the original

there is only one you.

and that makes your life valuable.