follow your heart: thanks, but that's easier in theory.

Before I decided that writing was what I felt called to do, I was terrified. Terrified that I had nothing to contribute and that I would end up in a meaningless job that didn’t play on my strengths, talents or passions. Many people are forced to do this, might I add, to support their families, so I recognize that this is a privilege that I could even stop to consider what I wanted. But before I found a therapist who specialized in CBT and actually spoke back to me (instead of nodding her head empathetically or saying “yes, I see, that is a hard dilemma…” when I asked for advice), I was told countless times to “follow my heart”, but that’s a cliché phrase that seems a little outdated and tone deaf in today’s climate. Here’s why I think so: there is so much outside noise and chatter muffling our inner voices. So many deprecating sentiments we have internalized and hustle-culture mantras that keep a tyrannical foot on our necks. First of all, I see hundreds of girls of my generation flaunting a variety of different lifestyles. Some live in the South of France, wearing bikini tops every day to stroll down cobblestone roads and shop at farmer’s markets with technicolor fruits and fresh bread. Some live in London, flaunting their latte runs and allocated Hyde Park reading time. Others in beachside towns here in America, like Charleston or Newport, promoting a slow-paced lifestyle with morning pilates, a marketing job with a content creation hustle, and Nancy Meyers-inspired apartments. Then, there’s the New Yorkers, professing they’re living in a movie by rushing from meeting to meeting and ducking into hole-in-the-wall restaurants, spending their nights living out their Carrie Bradshaw fantasies at clubs or ambient bars. The Californian influencers boast their green drinks, detoxes, saunas and wellness-centered lives, with sunshine and dark, foamy ocean waves beckoning a picturesque, tranquil life — if you have over half a million to drop on a condo near Malibu or Newport.

It used to be very common for baby boomers to have their latchkey kids carry on their legacies by continuing on in industries synonymous with the family name. The electrical engineering business, in my family’s case, was the obvious endgame for the men starting a career path. Practicality and legacy were the overarching themes when choosing a career in the 20th century, but things are vastly different now. First and foremost, technology offered entrepreneurs the ability to market and expand their businesses at full speed, granted they do it properly and have a mind that understands the nuance of marketing. Furthermore, everyone wants to have some sort of social media presence and is vying for an algorithmic claim to fame. We no longer see what regular lives look like, anymore. Although, there was a fleeting trend (“underconsumption core”) where people showcased their minimalist lives that didn’t cater to rapid consumerism — shampoo bottles 2/3 of the way used, well-loved shoes by the doorway, old iPhones, and outdated makeup palettes from 2012. It was refreshing, but again, fleeting.

Normally, what we are primed to see are busy, efficient, ambitious lives — pilates class at 9, brunch with the girls at 10, organic grocery shopping at noon, facial at 2, reply to emails at 3, and cocktails with the girls at 5. We also see extravagant trips and even people living in places we normally only used to see on postcards. All of this also ties back to having a “brand”, which now regular people without big followings are striving for — because that is a piece of the formula to becoming someone distinctive and novel. Mina Lee points out in her Youtube video, “why is social media not fun anymore?”, that social performance has always had a place in culture (we have different versions of ourselves that we present, depending on who we’re with and where we are), but hints that perhaps social media took that to another level.

It’s a case of having too many options at this point and too many expectations that counteract one another. What we’re being feed on our algorithms has skewed our perception of the “right way” to live. There are so many versions of the perfect life being presented to us, and not enough versions of ourselves to live out the dreams being sold to us. It creates a sense of quiet grief, feeling like no matter what, we must give something up. It takes the involvement of ourselves and our intutition, interests and organic “nudges” from the universe (if you believe in that kind of thing), out of the equation. Those essential things, which require us to slow down and really tune in to interpret the messages, are too abstract and transcendent to be heard above the meaningless noise of our feeds. It reminds me so much of the fig tree quote from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath:

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

Okay, so clearly there’s some psychology behind why mental health is plummeting and the overall contentness & happiness of society is undesirably low. But, how do you block out the noise? Social media is a double-edged sword, because it offers connection and inspiration. What if the life waiting for you is one you couldn’t have dreamt of until your algorithm showed you a video of a girl living her best life in a beach town you’ve never heard of, selling her paintings at the local artisan market? Balance is a really easy word to throw around, but it requires a sizable amount of self-discipline and expectation management to have that. Unsurprisingly, excessive social media use doesn’t help manage our expectations. It only grows them and the pesky voice in our minds that causes us to compare ourselves to others and drown in our shortcomings.

My favorite piece of advice I’ve been given was from my therapist, who gave me a handout of different values and had me number them, based on how important they were to me — family, praise, academic validation, a calm environment, etc. She then encouraged me to reflect on the values I prioritized and write down what things my soul craved — moving to the beach or writing for a certain magazines or getting a degree in something. She asked me to ponder on what the underlying values tied to those things were — because sometimes our “values” can actually be insecurities / trauma responses disguised as desires. It’s not a foolproof or perfect technique, because finding yourself & your purpose is a lifelong journey, but self-reflection is the first step to sifting through what you’ve been told to want and finding what your soul actually craves.