Normal Is Not the Same as Worthwhile

When I was a kid, what I wanted most was to be normal. To fit in. To have what everyone else had.

I was part of a gifted program. Now I can appreciate the opportunity that represented. At the time I did not want to be pulled out of class. I wanted to stay with everyone else.

I remember deliberately using smaller words in Grade 1 and sometimes mispronouncing things so I would not stand out. Even then, I was editing myself to match my idea of normal.

That wish to fit in showed up at lunch too. I brought sandwiches on my mom’s homemade bread, eggs from my grandparents’ farm, homemade cookies, and fresh produce from the garden. I recognize how fortunate I was to have such good food every day.

At the time, I wanted store-bought food. The kind that came in familiar packages. The kind everyone else seemed to have.

I am a little embarrassed to admit that I sometimes ate my homemade cookies upside down so they would look more like packaged cookies.

There was nothing wrong with those cookies. But I had absorbed a standard for what a desirable lunch looked like, and mine did not fit it.

The wish to belong shaped how I saw myself, what I had, and how I behaved.

I sometimes think about that insecure kid when I scroll through social media.

What starts to look normal

An influencer shares a carefully arranged home. A friend posts vacation photos. Someone celebrates a promotion, a fitness milestone, or an anniversary with a loving tribute to their partner.

Any one of those posts may be an honest reflection of a happy moment. People have good reasons to share things they are proud of, and enjoying someone else’s success can be part of a meaningful relationship.

But a feed brings those moments together. One person’s beautiful home sits beside another person’s wonderful vacation, another person’s career success, and another person’s apparently effortless relationship.

No single person needs to have a perfect life for the feed to give the impression that perfection is ordinary.

And because some of these people are our friends, the impression can feel close to home. We may recognize that an influencer’s content is part of a business. A friend’s post, however, can feel like a more direct indication of how people like us are doing. Leon Festinger’s social comparison theory (1954) predicts this: we tend to measure ourselves against people who seem like us.

What we repeatedly see can become a reference point for what we expect.

As a child, I wanted to look ordinary. In a social media feed, looking exceptional can start to seem like the requirement for fitting in. The standard may change, but the desire to belong remains.

Erich Fromm pressed this point to the scale of whole societies in his 1955 book, The Sane Society. He questioned whether fitting into a society was sufficient evidence of psychological health. Widespread acceptance, in his argument, does not establish that a way of living is healthy or valuable.

I think the distinction between normal and healthy can be useful. The same distinction applies to a feed: normal does not mean healthy or worthwhile. A familiar image of a good life still deserves examination. Seeing it everywhere does not tell us whether it is realistic or right for us. A norm tells us what is accepted or expected within a group. Its value, though, is a separate question.

The work outside the frame

Social media can also make the relationship between effort and achievement difficult to see.

We see the fitness milestone, but the months of training, interrupted routines, and slow progress stays out of view. We see the career announcement, but the unsuccessful applications and periods of uncertainty rarely become posts. We see a loving moment between partners, but the conversations through which they learned to understand each other happen elsewhere.

Sometimes we see an outcome without knowing the resources that helped make it possible: time, money, support, or circumstances different from our own.

None of this requires someone to be dishonest. A photograph has edges. A post has a purpose. Even an accurate account of a moment cannot contain the whole life around it.

Knowing this does not stop us from using those images as standards.

We know there is more to the story, yet we can still feel that we should be further along.

When difficulty feels like failure

The problem goes beyond wanting what someone else has. It changes how we evaluate our own effort. If achievement looks easy everywhere we turn, our own difficulty can start to feel like evidence that something is wrong with us.

Why does getting fit take me so long? Why does my relationship require so much conversation? Why am I still uncertain about my career when other people seem so settled?

For young people learning what to expect from themselves and from life, these are consequential questions. They are still developing a sense of what progress looks like and how to interpret setbacks. An impression of effortless success offers little help with either.

Difficulty does not always mean we should persist. Sometimes a goal needs reconsidering, a relationship needs to change, or more support is necessary. But difficulty alone cannot tell us that we are failing. Learning, building, and caring for things often involve work that is repetitive, uncertain, and hard to photograph.

If that work disappears from our reference points, we lose part of the context needed to understand our own lives.

Choosing the standard

We do not need to distrust every happy post or ask people to document their struggles. We can enjoy what others share while becoming more deliberate about the conclusions we draw from it.

When something makes us feel inadequate, three questions help: What am I actually seeing? What remains outside the frame? And why has this become the standard against which I am judging myself?

Even an accurate image of someone else’s life does not tell us what should matter most in ours.

A beautiful home may be something we value. So might time with family, meaningful work, friendship, or having enough space in the day to rest. Each comes with tradeoffs that a feed does not show.

With young people, we can talk about practice, uncertainty, support, and revision alongside the result. Tell them about the draft that took five tries, the training plan that fell apart in week three, the conversation that needed a second round. When they share an achievement, ask what it took before asking how it feels. And point out ordinary progress that has value even when it would make an unremarkable post.

I understand why I wanted to fit in. Looking back, I wish I had felt comfortable using the words I knew and accepting opportunities that made me stand out. I wish I had appreciated those homemade cookies. They had my mom’s time and care in them. The packaged ones looked as if no one had made them at all.

In both cases, I let what seemed normal to determine what felt acceptable, and I hid things of real value because they did not match the standard I imagined around me.

How often do we turn something valuable upside down, trying to make it resemble a life we have only seen from the outside?