What You Don’t See

It’s extremely easy to find things you want.

Anywhere you look in this social media driven world you are faced with other people’s lives. Your friend just celebrated achieving something big. Your favorite celebrity just got their newest luxury car. Your go to influencer just showed off their perfect family life. Your colleague just achieved something you’re aspiring to achieve. Whatever dream you have, you can probably find someone living it online.

And when you see it, it looks clean.
It looks resolved.
It looks finished.

You never see the mess before it.
You never see the maintenance after it.
You never see the parts that don’t photograph well.

Nothing is as good as it seems.
But you already know this.

It’s an old cliché. You’ve lived it yourself. You’ve done things that, before doing them, you were convinced would make everything better. A new job. A new city. A new relationship. A new goal. And for a moment, it works. There is relief. There is excitement. There is a sense of arrival.

Then life resumes.

The excitement fades.
The new normal settles in.
The promise quietly breaks.

Not because the thing was bad.
But because it was never meant to carry the weight you placed on it.

Yet you forget this again and again.

You romanticize.
You convince yourself this time is different.

If only you could achieve this.
If only you could reach that.
If only you could finally get XYZ.

Then you would be happy. Right?

This is how desire works.

It highlights the upside and blurs everything else. It edits reality. It makes the future look clean and the present feel intolerable.

Desire tells you a story.
And you rarely question the parts it leaves out.

If you’re prone to this kind of thinking, ask yourself this: