So I woke up on Saturday morning and as I was looking at my Instagram feed, one after the other pictures of perfect looking environments, crafts or just family moments, but they all looked perfect. So as I was sitting in bed after a crap night sleep with my son waking up every 40min and demanded I stroke his back while I sung Thomas the tank engine tune, I thought, why are we doing this to ourselves?
Why are we only sharing picture perfect moments? Is it to try to remember just that? Is it to make other people think that's how our lives always look?
And I do share picture perfect moments, a lot, but I try for good measure, and so no one around me believes I am just that person, to share as much as I can of real moments... So as we were sitting at the kitchen table a few hours later, son colouring/learning to write his name, husband having a coffee and reading the new toy catalogue and me drawing in my journal. I took a picture of the mess and shared this:
In the world we live in, the social media era, our competition instincts kicks in. I find that we are acting like my 3yo, we adults, are acting like children. We want to be the ones having the best fancy toy, be the first ones to do the activity, have the best, be the best.
But we go beyond that, because my 3yo is happy to be the first going down the stairs, he makes a happy dance as he reaches the bottom step in the mornings ahead of me, and moves on. We take a picture of it, or twenty, until we get the perfect one, and share... we think about the caption, and what we want to make others believe our reality looks like.
Why????? Why do we put ourselves under such pressure. And why have we chosen to get in this race. Fear of missing out? maybe. A Natural instinct? could also be.
I don't really know the answer to this one. What I know is that I want to show my son that we can create beautiful things with our own two hands. That we don't need fancy materials. That a bit of glue and glitter makes everything better. And that IT DOES NOT NEED TO BE PERFECT. It just IS.
So next time you have a rainy day, bring out whatever materials you have to hand and don't forget the glue. And just make something, together, messy, fun and don't worry about making it Pinterest ready, just make it real.
Nati xx
