MISUSING INDIVIDUALISM

#7 (From the series "MISUSE")

The world is spiralling into a newfound appreciation for one’s self. I used the word “spiralling” quite purposely, as today’s reality wants to “settle” in the centre of human needs, and how we can all accomplish being our best versions. Like as if we’re products. Not just products to be sold and bought, but to be embodied. To become the ideal version, in an ideal society. Not only do we treat ourselves as products of society, we have now dove into the concept of self-centred behavioural patterns, that mask egotistic habits as, individualistic.

“Introducing the new Athina 3.6. She’s come with updates on how she handles her anger, her menstrual mood-swings, and along with a new hair-cut too! She manages to work, eat, sleep, pray, rage, rave, and all that in just 24 hours!”

Imagine thus for a minute if you were to place all your “latest” self-development teachings, and physical modifications into a phrase like that. It personally caught me off guard. And it hurt me to think of myself as a product. Of course I felt objectified by myself. But is this how we allow our society to see us? Is my current individual self, actually individual? Am I hustling my life into a bigger, greater, selfless community, where we all support each other for being so individualistic? Or are we really, just preaching the individual “grind” and each specific and (categorised) chosen-modern lifestyle as a left-over of the worse bits we’ve still managed to “market” -somehow- as, just living our life. Just trying to do what we can?

So how does our individualism play a role in how we’ve been manipulated to view our “negative” aspects as items of needing improvement, and are we really doing this for us? Or, that our “positive and fruitful” aspects, are actually great not just for the economy, but for others to (for instance) spiritually benefit from, and so, I guess we can market those too? Can’t a life coach just go out in public and “teach life” for free? Of course they can. But, this life coach has a 700 euro rent to pay. We all depend on each other, to spend our money, so we can all make sure we survive. And at the end of the day, when we’re just us, and we’ve managed to survive, who are we really? Were we ourselves, or was there an under-lying string pulling and playing us all-day long?

Not so fast now.

Our daily lives are now constantly plastered with, and bombarded, with real-life examples, and some also very fake examples, that we’re either not doing enough for ourselves, or, maybe we’re doing too much, so take a breath there my friend, you deserve it. This self-loathing approach to anything we do nowadays, is all deeply stemmed from others. That’s right. We’re all in this together, but we’re all also making ourselves hate each other. The same influencer that shows you their daily routine from 6AM to 8PM, who manages to do everything but conquer the world in one day, is the same one who will upload that video that says, “Hey, make sure to not be so hard on yourself. You can have a cheat day. You can enjoy life.”, well thanks for making sure we feel bad in the other videos, and quite reassured in the latter. This toxic-psychological-mind-game, is a great take-away of why I have abandoned most social media apps. Whether it’s a happy-go-lucky video, or another portraying fragility and pleading for purposely-stimulated emotional reassurance that we’re just human, is quite inhumane. It’s the banana on stick, and we’re all monkeys.

We influence each other so much, it’s a bit disturbing. The only way I’ve managed to escape this disturbance, is by understanding, and accepting my individuality. Well, that sounds easy. All I have to do is accept myself? Hah, well it can be that easy. It could be a wonderful world if we didn’t feel competitive, or envious, when we see that someone, just might be living a life that by influenced perception is “better” than ours. Our perception on the term better, seems to change every day. Because every day, there is “new and better” and there is also “new and better and if you’re still stuck on the previous stuff, you’re not up-to-par with the world”. We choose to royally fuck our individuality every time we sit and watch a video of what someone cooked today, and what someone shopped today, and what someone crocheted. We think, “We can do it. Why not? I mean everyone’s doing it.”. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t crochet. But, I’m just saying that, I’m tired of going out and meeting people who have done the same exact thing that everybody else has done, because in that time period, everybody’s doing just that.

Besides all of us turning into the same person, in actuality our social feeds don’t know us as well as we think; We’re just influenced to like the same things. There are millions of dollars being spent every day to make sure someone’s advertisement pops up to you, to your friends, to your mother, to your neighbour etc. We live in times where, you don’t exactly happen to like the same things, we’re just very much brainwashed to like them. Our individuality has left the chat since paragraph two guys.

Do I believe I am individualistic? I do, because I stopped giving into trends and fads and decided that what I like, is exactly that. My personal preference. And we should never feel entitled or justified to explain who we are. The obsession of having to overanalyse who we are, label ourselves, and then have to answer anybody or everybody’s question, is exhausting. And often, can confuse us more with who we are. We often end up doubting ourselves, if we’re not mostly confident in what we do. And confidence is very hard to maintain in today’s times. We have down-played our individuality to fit and conform into cyber-social-acceptance. Because plain ol’ real-world-societal-acceptance wasn’t enough, right?

As a silver lining, and not to depress you any further, I have had great epiphanies on individuality. Just make sure to subscribe to my exclusive Substack VIP posts to find out more about them.

I’m just joking.

I haven’t had epiphanies, I’ve just had the great pleasure of sitting down with myself and becoming more conscious in every decision I make. From what time I sit on my computer, to what time I sit and read a book. What I look up on my computer, and what books I read, are decisions made with great effort and consistent self-realisations of what truly speaks to me. I’ve never been the person to want to know it all, or be it all. I’ve often been the person to say, “What’s/Who’s that?”, and while your friends might initially shame you for allegedly “living under a rock”, your friends have a spark in their eye to have the opportunity to share and explain to you what that is. And that’s how it should be. It’s refreshing.

It’s okay that we’re not all the same thing, and we should learn to embrace that more. And not just that, it’s okay to not know, to not have lived a same experience as someone else, it’s okay to be the insignificant in one moment, it’s totally all normal. Let’s just say, you can’t be the main character every day. And that is a blessing. Because, if you really want to know what my epiphany is…

Individuality is being content with yourself, when you’re alone, and not having to feel like you’re straying away from your self, when you’re with others. That is true individuality. Being, and staying golden.