A Lack of Perspective

One of the hardest things in life is to remember that you, as a single, individual being on this heavily populated planet on which we live and breathe, are honestly not that important. Unless you are, say, the President, you and your issues are fairly minute compared to the rest of the world.
I think the people that have the hardest time swallowing this all too important life lesson are teenagers. When you're under the influence of the hormones and the stresses of high school and every other factor that weighs so heavily on adolescents' shoulders, you tend to feel like your problems and your situations are entirely unique and that their magnitudes are totally misunderstood by those around you.
But the thing is...the things we, myself most definitely included, tend to freak out over really don't matter that much. I know. Take a second; it is kind of surprising. Specifically when one considers the number of starving or homeless or hurting people in the world. If our goal as Christ followers is to serve Him, why do we stress over chemistry labs or whether or not you've moved from being just friends with a guy to "talking" to him? (I hate this term, just for the record. That, however, is a whole 'nother blog post for another day.) Why do we get so caught up in the trivial things that are right in front of us when there's a bigger, grander picture on the horizons?
What is it that we're missing out on while we're focusing on the here and now?
And more gravely, who aren't we reaching while we're so focused on ourselves?

Envisioning Ourselves

In my life lately, I've been trying to actually start growing up. I'm realizing that, even though seventeen still feels quite young to me, I'm about to have to graduate and get a job and enter the "real world." I'm kinda in limbo between being a kid and being an adult, and while it can be fun, most of the time it's just moderately scary.
So I figure if I'm about to be figuratively shoved out of the nest, I had better start getting ready. So, long intro coming to a close hopefully very soon, I've been asking God to help me mature and make me into the woman He wants me to be, along with surrendering control of said adulthood to him.
And in my process of attempting to mature, I've been noticing some things.
Tonight, for instance, upon running into an exboyfriend of mine in Wal-Mart (amazing how you can run into every single person you know while you're there. Small towns -sigh-) and hearing some of the not nicer things he had to say, I started thinking them over. (Just for the record, he wasn't, like, just flat out mean. Just a little condescending.) And then I started feeling dumb for even giving it a second thought.
And I started to realize something about myself. I let people get to me far easier than I'd like to think. I've always thought myself so tough, specifically emotionally, but I've been noticing it really isn't that hard to get in my head. So my tough guy image may not be so accurate after all.
So now I wonder, is it just me or does everyone fall victim to this? Do we all have a false image of ourselves ingrained so deeply into our minds that we fail to see who we really are?
This isn't the first time I've come to a conclusion such as this. There have been several times in my life when I've seen an aspect of myself burst forth that I didn't anticipate or even know existed.
So it causes me to wonder...
Are we lost in a world full of people, all with ideas of themselves different than they, themselves, really are?
And when it comes to our own identities, how truly clear is our vision?

I really hate chick flicks.

No, really. I do.

And not because I'm some cynical, love and romance and fairytale hating loner.

...not entirely anyway ;)

I think they're ridiculous. I think they put unfair standards on men and give women these unlikely and unrealistic expectations of what their "knight in shining armor" is supposed to say/do/be.

Now, don't get me wrong here, I'm certainly not some radical feminist. But I think it's sad how we like to put men up on pedestals and view them as things we need to attain. We idealize them and then get our hearts broken when they turn out to be, ya know, people. But that's what they are. As John Green says, "what a treacherous thing it is to think that a person is more than a person."

We're taught practically from the time we enter the world that we need to wear certain things and act certain ways to gain male attention. We focus so much of our time and thought on dating and how to win the next guy or nurse the current heartbreak. Even as we age and mature, society tells us to make plans for ourselves centering around the assumption that we'll be married as a twenty-something.

And so the media certainly isn't helping by shoving these images of the perfectly handsome, perfectly consistent, perfectly perfect prince in our faces constantly. It's just not fair.

And just not real. But then again what is real these days? So maybe it makes sense after all.

and I am just some big ole cynic. Eh, I'm okay with that. :)