We Consume Everyone Else’s Lives Instead of Building Our Own

Sara Marlena

24 hours ago

5 min read

I read one of my old essays recently, and boy, did I cringe hard. I didn’t agree with a great deal of what I wrote and even found myself questioning some of the language I used. But while I am somewhat reluctant to admit it, I think I’m glad that I hate my own work. I guess, in some ways, that means I am growing.

In a world where we’ve permitted ourselves to continuously pick things up and abandon them without much thought, staying with something long enough to become agitated by it feels like a quiet win. Finally, you’ve come across something worth keeping in this irreverent search for depth we’re all in the midst of. It feels like, at least in one area of my life, I am choosing to pursue a sense of mastery, even if I am not sure I believe there’ll ever come a time when I arrive at an endpoint of some smug clarity, knowing I have made it. It’s bittersweet. But it makes me want to keep going, insatiably writing, reading, editing, deleting whole chapters I bawled my eyes over, and start again.

This does make me ponder, though, at what point did we decide that being nonchalant about everything was all the rage? I consider myself a jack of all trades. I have dabbled in enough careers and pursuits in life to know I can pick up and run with quite a few different options, if the need appears. And believe me, I am entirely against the idea of specialisation. I love how multidimensional and flexible humans are. I think we need different ideas and colours to coexist. To be beginners in some, proficient in a few, and sit restlessly in the middle of others. We are not, and never were, only one thing. But doesn’t this total freedom feel a little boring at times?

Like dating emotionally unavailable people.

At some point, the charm of their uncertainty wears off even for the most questionably wired of us, and behind that facade remains something very mediocre. It’s not very this or very that; it just kind of is. This noncommittal way of life is so entirely unsexy. And the longing for infinite possibilities isn’t impressive or brave; it’s the ground which births mediocrity. I don’t like smoothies, because they can’t decide whether they’re a meal or a drink. I don’t like OK. OK always felt like a punishment.

It isn’t about the romanticised chaos that comes with the pursuit of the craft or whatever other desire we’re after. It’s about a knowing that’s so deeply rooted it makes you try and try again, even if in some way, you’re aware that the finish line doesn’t quite exist, or have no idea what one would even look like. It’s about the doors, and the versions of you you’ll encounter in that pursuit.

But it’s not something you casually stumble upon, because intention alone isn’t enough. If we always keep one foot in and one foot out, the results will always be half-arsed. I don’t like driving in the middle lane. Not en route to the places that determine the quality of my life. I do, on the other hand, love a drive so pure it verges on madness.

Because somewhere in there is how we come across an ounce of what feels like purpose. Not just through the freedom in trying everything, but by really having the balls to say this one is going to be mine. But mastery requires a heavy level of vulnerability that many of us are just too ‘cool’ for.

As a society, we’re currently in an era of overconsumption. Other than food and shopping, this concerns content, ideas, and knowledge. We’re skimming headlines, memorising 140-character wisdom, and running ahead, claiming to know it all and care for nothing in particular. We have become a society so obsessed with trends that we mistake those for having a real personality. Our intelligence is the controversial story we repost. Our taste is the entire feed of a stranger. Our hobbies, travels, ideas and plans, not many of them seem to be truly ours nowadays, and I think it’s a little concerning how freely we embody the aliveness of another, instead of having the courage and tenacity to dig a little deeper to find our own. In a world where every vacation warrants a suitcase filled with new fits, a birthday dinner needs a moodboard, and a breakup asks for a lifestyle overhaul... Where do we sit on the topic of actually living our lives for ourselves? Because our constant need for more isn't just about shopping, then dealing with buyer’s remorse. It’s about continuously filling our brains with information and ideas that, more often than not, do nothing but sit stagnant in our heads. And while much of our consumption comes from a good place, from the desire to know and learn and see and feel more, shouldn’t there be some equilibrium on output versus input? A moment where we have enough pictures, wisdom, and ideas, and we can finally put them to good use.

Maybe there is an element of being in constant recovery that prevents this movement for some, too. Learning and studying to a point of procrastination; a mental, and sometimes even physical, freeze. Maybe if I heal enough, if I gather enough wisdom, if I find the answers before taking the next steps. But what if our constant preparation is what’s keeping so many of us from enjoying the life we envision for ourselves? Clarity often comes from action, not information. You quite literally cannot prepare for it all, so at what point does all that you know, think, and want warrant the decision that you have consumed enough, and perhaps, it’s time to get up and do something with it?

Because truly, you cannot know how to play a guitar just by reading the book if you never actually pick up and play the damn thing. This isn’t a plea to stop consumption. You can and should consume, by all means. Yet if all you ever do is absorb it all; if you never embody, practice, try, interpret, live by the wisdom, creativity, inspiration and ideas you consume, you become a museum of everything you ever saw, not the human living through it all.

Because to create and produce and have deep conversations where your ideas and beliefs are challenged, is to explore the depths of what any of it even means to you. To sincerely put your own understanding and perception of the topic to the test is to find out how much of it you really understand. To study art, then dare to produce it, is to put the history and the theory of it all to canvas and see how much, if any of it, was ever really your thing, or if it just sounded like it should be. Through dedicated and practised output, this information we hold becomes embodied, lived in. But if all we do is consume, our identity stands at the worrisome threshold of becoming indistinguishable from those around us.

In this, we become the remarks, the opinions, the validation and adoration, or its lack, too, since our brain knows no better than to keep absorbing and hardly ever needing to do anything past that.

So, maybe it’s time to decide that we have consumed enough, and we can start challenging some of those ideas, start putting the plans we make into action, and create something out of the inspiration we’ve gathered.

You cannot fail if you never try, you cannot get rejected if you never choose, but isn’t it a

shame to have never tried? To never even give yourself the chance to hate your work solely because you know you’re capable of more.