Jezebel

Today I'm not going to talk about my day. Namely because 1. not many interesting things happened today (although I try to find something different in every day) and 2. This is something that's been on my mind for a little bit.

I've been reading this blog, Jezebel for a little while now, ever since my roommate shared with me all her feminist blogs that she follows. And while there's a lot of interesting articles about a range of topics like fashion and psychology, but there are obviously a disproportionate amount of feature pieces that attack Victoria's Secret models, Kim Kardashian and sexist things that radio talk show hosts say about women. And I'm all for attacking those things because I agree with Jezebel that they make women feel bad about themselves, which they shouldn't.

Sometimes it feels like the anti-media assumes women are so delicate, fragile and that one picture of Rihanna in a bikini will make us either collapse in self-pitying tears or fly into a rage of feminist aggression. There's no middle ground. I'm sick of opening up a magazine and reading 3 articles of how to lose weight and 2 articles telling me why I shouldn't care what THEY want me to look like. It's irritating that people still think that how you look will make you happy.

And I know this because I already know the secret to happiness. And that is:

Stop comparing yourself to other people. Their story is NOT your story.

That's it. If everyone (not just girls obviously) realized this, there would be no jealousy or insecurity of any kind.

If everyone could open up a magazine, see a beautiful model and instead of saying:

"Oh my God, she is BEAUTIFUL. No...it's photoshop, obviously...but still even without it she's skinner than me and prettier, I bet she's making a ton of money doing nothing and I'm sure guys are all over her all the time. I'll never be like her"

They could say:

"Wow, this woman is really really gorgeous. I appreciate her beauty like I would a really nice painting. But the fact that she's on magazine covers doesn't mean that I'm less pretty or that people love me any less, we don't really have anything to do with each other."

I think we live in a world where, thanks to Facebook, Twitter and TMZ, we are constantly being bombarded with updates on everyone's life, pictures of them on vacations or at parties, notifications on other people's relationship and statuses about the awesome things they're doing. We carefully craft our Facebook pages to make sure that everyone knows that we too are keeping up with the fun. And according to surveys and studies, it's making us MISERABLE.

Because knowing what other people have, make what we have seem less and that makes us feel incomplete, not good enough. And in today's society that's not acceptable.

Not to make this into a Dvar Torah here but I never understood the phrase in Perkai Avot "He who is rich, is happy with what he has." It seemed like Ben Zoma is telling us to settle. 'Don't reach any higher, don't set goals, just be happy with what you have and that's the end of it.'
It wasn't until I heard an alternate explanation that it made sense to me.

"He who is rich is GRATEFUL for what he has."

Because when you're grateful for the things you have, you can still reach higher and whether you fail or not, that doesn't make you less thankful for the things you have at the moment. When you're grateful, other people's successes don't make yours any less. For some reason, this made more sense to me than 'happy'.

So my message for all of you today isn't to just blindly be happy with what you have. We should always strive for the best in life, whether that happens today or in a year from now. But we shouldn't make other people's happiness make ours any less.
That girl with the 250$ pair of shoes doesn't make yours any less nice.
The cute couple on the park bench doesn't make you less likely to find someone.

The things you love in your life are YOURS. And don't let a stranger, magazine model or FB status take that away from you.