As people, are we really living or just trying to fit in?

Hiee reader! How are you doing??? I know it’s been a longgg timeee since I wrote anything on here, and trust me, I’m not very proud of it. (:/) I started writing in Jan 2025 and have only written 5 posts so far, including this one, which might be the last one for this year unless something changes my mind. I have a big pile of topics lying around that I wanna write about so badly, but procrastination just doesn’t seem to leave me alone. I know that’s a lame excuse, but I’ll try to do better next year. (:P)

Anyway, getting back to the topic. This post is about the observations I’ve been making recently, including a very recent one.

Have you ever been in a place or a position where you felt like you don’t belong there? I’m pretty sure most of us have felt that at least once in our lifetime. It could be anywhere. A school, a college, or a cafe. And the feeling is partially because of the people around you. They somehow don’t seem to click with you, and it feels like an entirely different world altogether.

Note: This is just one of the observations I’ve made in general. I’m trying to write about the overall pattern, not just one moment.

So here’s how it went: My friends and I decided to meet on a weekend (which we’d been delaying for a month now), so I randomly picked a cafe from Google Map’s “what’s happening in your city” section (bc all my friends, including me, are lazy). Well, that cafe turned out to be great. It was surrounded by trees, had misters all around, and the tiny water droplets landing on you felt so niceeee and cozy. Honestly, the vibe was 10/10.

But other than being a great place, I had this one distinct feeling the whole time I was there. It felt like a place where I don’t belong. Wait, what? What does that even mean? Tbh, I don’t know either, but let me try to explain.

It felt like a place where all the cool and rich kids would hang out, but not someone like me or my friends. Not because it wasn’t a good place, but because I could clearly see a split in people’s personalities, in the way they interacted and in the way they talked to each other.

It almost felt like people were pretending to be a version of themselves that they’re really not. And naturally, we as humans can tell when someone’s not being themselves, right? Well, that’s what I saw too.

So while I was sitting there, I started wondering how people can live different lives knowing that none of this is permanent. But then I decided maybe I should write about it. And yes, you’re right. That’s exactly how I pick what to write. Straight out of thin air.

Anyway, I’m not going to base the entire article on just that single observation, so let’s move on. I’m gonna put together a section called “Pretending, performing, and losing ourselves in the process” and I will elaborate on topics that represent this subject as a whole. Here we go:

Pretending, performing, and losing ourselves in the process

It’s no secret that social media is a big part of people’s lives now, and I’ve seen enough people constantly trying to fit in, no matter what their real life looks like. The sad part, I think, is that they put in so much effort even when it makes zero difference to the people they’re trying to impress.

We all have our own way of living, shaped by the circumstances we grew up in, but we don’t have to be something we’re not, especially just to feel socially validated.

Does it ever occur to you that the people you know in real life are a bit different on social media? I’m pretty sure we all know such people. And by different, I don’t mean in a bad way. It’s just that their personality feels a little off.

The way they portray themselves online doesn’t match who they really are. I find it strange that people are willing to change parts of themselves for a kind of validation that barely means anything.

At some point this becomes a norm in our lives without us even realizing it. Everything we do turns into an act of impressing an audience, and if that audience fails to react the way we expected, we end up disappointing ourselves. And we never stop. The effort to impress keeps increasing with each attempt, and our entire lives slowly become more about entertaining an audience than actually living one.

That’s it. We lose ourselves trying to be something we’re not and never looking back. But again, not everything is black and white. We can definitely add a bit of color to our lives, and here’s how I think we can do that:

The other side of the aisle

Welcome to the non complaining part of the article (:P). Let’s see how we can avoid letting societal pressure make decisions on our behalf. Look, I’m no saint. We have all done things to impress people or make them notice us, but at least back then we had some purpose for it. We expected something in return. It felt like an effort for effort kind of thing. But in this case it is mostly effort for ignorance.

No matter what you think you are doing, the audience you are trying to impress will still look at you the same way. So the best way to avoid this entire effort for ignorance cycle is to accept that we do not owe anyone anything. At least not strangers on the internet or in real life. And the same goes for them. We can learn to live at our own pace, without having to think about anyone else.

If you have a few people who genuinely care about you, I think that is all you really need. Why would you put in so much effort for anyone else when there is no return? We can simply stop creating temporary environments for ourselves just to entertain an audience. That is the job of celebrities and big screens. Ours is to look around, accept things the way they are, and make peace with ourselves.

I believe that as humans we have this magical ability to self-validate our choices and make peace with them. The kind of validation that feels like it is ours rather than shaped by someone else’s expectations or some kind of external pressure.

Reflection

I think the point I’m trying to make is that we don’t have to carry the burden of maintaining multiple versions of ourselves for a mere societal acceptance unless it genuinely makes us happy.

We can probably ask ourselves this one thing: When was the last time we were actually happy while trying to impress a bunch of social strangers? The answer will most likely be never, because the key to happiness, at least in my lens, is being the truest version of ourselves and not the version a certain audience expects us to be.

Well, that’s all for this post. You’re free to agree or disagree with it. I just wanted to write down my perspective and I did. Other than that, I’ll try to write more, I promise. (:P)