I don’t often experience social media-induced envy, but I had a raging case on Friday night. As I sat outside the Target dressing rooms while my daughter tried on pants, I scrolled through Instagram and Facebook. Many friends were posting about U2’s Joshua Tree tour. I wished with all my heart that I could be at the concert, too.
Then I went home and looked at the news, and I got my sense of perspective back. Sure, I’d enjoy going to the U2 concert. But I’m fortunate to have a home, and it’s not threatened by hurricanes. I’m really blessed.
When we have a sense of perspective, it enables us to reach out to others. If we’re focused on what we lack in life, we may be less willing to share what we have. Like many Americans, I struggle to make ends meet. We need to do some work on our house and to replace one or two of our cars. But we have a house and more than one car. We are employed and have health insurance. We may not be in America’s 1%, but on a global scale, we are part of the 1%. I can see no better thing to do with our wealth than to use it to help others.
Sometimes it’s easier to spot a lack of perspective in others’ lives than noticing our own. If I’m near our football stadium and see someone holding up a sign that says “I NEED TICKETS,” I always want to fix the sign, replacing “NEED” with “WANT.”
However, most of the time I recommend you keep your mouth shut and focus on your own sense of perspective. There are exceptions to this. If your children have “affluenza,” it can be important to remind them of how fortunate they are. But sometimes you end up belittling someone’s pain when you compare their suffering to what others are going through. If someone complains about their job, the proper response is not “At least you have a job.” A lousy job sucks, no matter what the economy is like. And in some cases, people who seem to lack perspective are suffering from depression or anxiety — serious mental health disorders that cannot be cured by merely looking on the bright side.
But in our own lives, it can be valuable to work on developing a sense of perspective. Practicing gratitude through exercises like keeping a gratitude journal can help you focus on what you have, instead of what you lack. Likewise, keeping up with world news can be a marvelous way of giving yourself a sense of perspective.
From there, we may find ourselves reminded how fortunate we are, and we may feel called to share our good fortune with others.
If you are truly suffering for any reason — a tragedy in your life, depression, a distressing situation that seems inescapable — please go easy on yourself. Your pain is real, even if there are others who are suffering more. But for those of us who, like me, are just wishing for a better life, let’s put things in perspective and ask ourselves how we can use what we’ve been blessed with to do good.