Life is not long.There is perhaps nothing more wasteful than spending your days thinking only about other people. I believe it is better to live while caring about other people’s lives and gossip on social media, so that your own life does not become empty. The danger of unconsciously falling into a habit of “watching other people’s lives”… What you lose while going along with the powerful.
Let’s create your own story. You have a one-of-a-kind story that belongs only to you. Living in a way that creates it deepens the meaning of life. The meaning of being alive is something you create yourself. No one will give it to you.
1. [Introduction] Whose life are you living?
You open your smartphone and casually scroll through Instagram or X (formerly Twitter). Before you know it, other people’s glamorous daily lives, beautiful scenery, and smiling, “living-the-dream” faces keep appearing one after another. In that moment, have you ever felt your own life suddenly look colorless?
In principle, “other people’s happiness” should have nothing to do with “your own happiness.” And yet, your heart reacts unconsciously. “Why does that person seem to be having so much fun, while I feel so anxious?” “Maybe I’m doing something wrong.” Before you know it, you start blaming yourself.
This is the true nature of the invisible anxiety that many people in modern society carry.
And that is exactly where the danger of “watching other people’s lives all the time” begins.
This article is written for you.
So that you can become the protagonist of your own life, instead of living as a character in someone else’s story.
Right now,let’s regain the perspectiveof creating “your own story.”
2. Why do we unconsciously end up “watching other people’s lives” all the time?
The “trap of comparison” brought by social media
Social media is originally a tool for connection and sharing information. But in reality, it has become a place where we unconsciously compare “ourselves” and “others.”
What stands out most are posts that only show the “good parts.”
A trip with a partner, success at work, smiling with friends, an ideal lifestyle. Even though these are just fragments, they create the illusion that “that person’s whole life is shining.”
When we see that, we unconsciously think this:
“Maybe I’m inferior in some way.”
For me, social media is a small world, a small sea—an area where truth does flow, but where falsehood is also abundant. In such a place, I think there are many people who keep comparing themselves to others and end up feeling worthless. And sometimes, because they can no longer feel value in things, people, or words that should truly have value, they begin to see themselves that way too, creating a sense of self-worthlessness. I believe that if I have just a little richness, someone I can trust, and an environment I consider good, that alone is happiness. So, not exactly by choice, I prefer to live in a quiet countryside place with nothing around—somewhere that people consumed by greed and worldly desires would dislike. That too was something I naturally chose in the past for psychological self-defense. In other words, in the past I was subjected to manipulative psychological control and sly gaslighting by a cult-like presence, which I could not explain at the time. The person doing this mocked the countryside to an abnormal degree, was full of worldly desires, was a scammer, and had psychopathic traits—treating the destruction of other people’s families almost like a hobby. People like that are always scheming to invade from the outside. And they could not stand loneliness. Their way of life was always to parasitize the outside and take from it. So for that person, the countryside—where there are extremely few targets to take from—was worthless. For them, the countryside was a place they could not survive in. Because places with many people gather there, they can scam people, and there are plenty of targets to manipulate psychologically. There are also plenty of vulnerable families they can enjoy destroying. Because they were that kind of person, the countryside was painful for them and they could not live there. That person was frenemy-like and deceitful, and I too was deceived by them in the past. Their stalking behavior toward me was abnormal. They clung to me obsessively, secretly spread lies around me, tried to separate me from others, spread rumors, and worked behind the scenes to make me look like the bad one—all while approaching me with kind words and nice things to say. Back when I couldn’t see through it, I got involved, and that led to emotional wounds and discomfort. In short, for me, while wandering in search of a place where my heart could recover, I naturally arrived in a quiet countryside with nothing around. It was a place where harmful presences were less likely to come near me. Even so, they came to where I lived as a frenemy and spread false rumors around the neighborhood, which honestly surprised me😅 To put it simply, some of that happened in the past, and from there I deepened my understanding and moved toward recovery. During that recovery process, I learned in depth—through correct knowledge and from psychological and neuroscientific perspectives—what kind of situation I had been in and what I had gone through, so I was able to cut that person off firmly without being deceived again. And that presence was one that worked with tremendous force to instill a sense of self-worthlessness in me. Because of that, I once suffered from self-worthlessness in the past, but then I came to understand that in a quiet countryside with nothing around, even clean air, the mountains, roads, and country people that many regard as worthless all have wonderful value, and that each person has a past and a life drama. I became able to feel value I had never recognized before. Through this change, I looked back on my entire life from a broader perspective. As a child, there had been a time when I felt value in everything. Then, under the control of adults, my heart twisted, grew荒んだ, and became aggressive, and by seeing even unrelated people as worthless trash, I was protecting my heart from being hurt any further. I had made myself see this world and the people in it as worthless trash, and I was looking at a gray world. From that state, I once planted cosmos seeds in the countryside, and I was deeply moved when the seeds I had sown bloomed into such beautiful flowers. I felt enormous value in that. In a quiet countryside with nothing around, a place no one even looks at. No one would care if cosmos grew there. And yet, for me, there was tremendous value, beauty, and loveliness there—the joy and delight of watching something grow. Even when I see other people’s success, money, or whatever they are bragging about on social media, I don’t feel jealous. For me, value lies in psychological growth and change, and in the life I am living now. My pet cat is already 13 years old. I don’t know how much longer it can live. Within these 13 years of memories, there is also an immeasurable amount of gratitude. Cats are kinder beings than many people imagine, and these 13 years have allowed me to understand that deeply. For example, if someone said, “I’ll give you 100 million yen now, so erase your memories with that cat and throw the cat away. Then I’ll give you the money,” I would not accept it without hesitation. My pet cat is not worth that kind of value to me. In the countryside, I feel a value in my cat that is more than 1 billion yen—no, a value that cannot even be compared. But the me from back when I was full of worldly desires could not understand the me of now. At the time when my heart was most rotten, I would probably have thought, “What’s with the cosmos? Flowers are something creepy people like.” In fact, there was a time in the past when I really did feel that way.
In other words, what I just wrote is part of my story, and the theme is “value.” I came to know worthlessness, was wounded by it, suffered from it, and then changed into someone who can feel a new kind of value.
「人生は長くない。無意識のうちに『他人の人生を見てばかり』になってしまう危うさ:自分の物語を創ろう」の続きが購入後に読めます。
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