Not Alone Series: Envy and Singlehood

I’ve been seeing several of the blogs I follow blog in this Not Alone Series link-up. When I first saw it I thought I’d join in as I’m also single and struggle with it most days but I would forget about it or didn’t know what to say about that weeks topic or let’s be honest just got lazy. When I saw this weeks topic was Envy I thought I really need to write about this weeks topic because I REALLY struggle with this and need to get it all out there! I’m not sure I have much advice but I’ll do my best…so here goes nothing!

 

In this day and age I feel like it’s SO much EASIER to see “Envy” and be Envious of others. Between the cute photos and announcements on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, blogs and other social media websites everything is sooo in our face. I’m currently reading this book called 101 Secrets for Your Twenties by Paul Angone and even if you aren’t in your twenties I think this book has a TON of advice that will help singles or anyone really. There are two secrets that I really stand by when it comes to envy. They are secrets #22 and #35.

The thing about all this obsessive sharing and things we see is that all we see is the “good stuff” the outside of the story. Like Amanda said in her post we see the pretty flowers that your friends husband sent her but we didn’t see the 3 hour fight they had the night before about who didn’t pay the electric bill and they had no power when it was 100 degrees in their house last night. Because of how open and public facebook is we are CONSTANTLY comparing our lives to the “lives” we see on Facebook. I laugh at some of the details in Paul’s book about facebook:

 Don’t ever, ever check Facebook when you’re:

A. Depressed

B.  Drinking.

C.  Depressed and Drinking.

D.  Unemployed.

E.  Anytime after 9:17 pm.

F.  Struggling with being blessed with singleness while all your friends seem to be blessed with 2.4 kids and that blazing white-picket-fence shining with the glory of Jesus Christ himself.

This is so true. I’ve checked facebook during all these times and it would never end well but sometimes I’ll go into a facebook group and see something so inspiring it makes everything okay again.

There’s so many things I can say about envy and singlehood. I’ve started at this post for the last couple of days and deleted a lot of things that I wrote as it just made me look pathetic or ended with me just crying. I’ve been a some-what emotional mess this week. I could go on and on about all the things I wish I had that I didn’t and all the things that I have that I wish I didn’t but really that wouldn’t help me or you and if you are single and reading this I’m sure you struggle with the same things so you can just read my mind on that aspect.

I think Envy is something everyone deals with no matter what phase of life you are at. I think it helps when we become envious of someone else to just write it all down. Just write what we are feeling and how it makes us feel etc. etc. I know everyone says it but writing is really healing for a lot of people. When someone first told me this and that I should write down my feelings I thought they were crazy and couldn’t imagine what they were talking about. Yes I have a blog but somedays blogging was so light-hearted and sometimes I struggled with this whole blogging thing. But then after writing about how I was feeling a few times it really did help. It doesn’t have to be long or grammatical correct (no one is going to grade you on it). It can be two sentences before you go to bed.  I use evernote for mine and if I’m out and about I’ll pull it up on my phone and jot things down. Find out what works for you because God made you just the way you are and for whatever reason he blessed us with this period of singleness for reasons that we won’t ever understand until years down the line and we’ll think back and it’ll feel like it was such a short period of our lives.

This made me think of something I heard at mass last week. The priest talked about how retirement is about 10-20 years of our lives. If you think about it that isn’t very long. Say you live to be 80. That is only 13-25% of your life (less than half) and if you think about it most people the last 5ish years of their life are ill and can’t do very much. So if your “singleness” is 20 years of your 80 year life that is still less than half of your life. So we still have a lot of living to do that we need not take for granted.

Thanks for Jen and Morgan for hosting this series! Next week is “challenge week” and I am looking forward to seeing what that means!