I totally agree with you. People, including myself, try to be the best person possible, and by best, I mean we try to be as close to perfect as possible (because we believe total perfection is humanly unrealistic). We try so hard to be smart, successful, athletic, good-looking, funny, popular, and the list goes on and on. We do not strive to posses only one or some of these qualities, we strive to possess all of them; we strive to be as perfect as humanly possible.
The problem with this is that society defines perfection. Subjective adjectives such as smart, successful, athletic, good-looking, funny, and popular are defined by our society. Society also defines us and our place in the world, and therefore influences what we do and become. We want society to see us as smart, successful, athletic, good-looking, funny, popular, etc., so we try our best to become these things. Consequentially, we feel pressure to live up to (and perhaps go above and beyond) society’s standards and expectations of us. We feel pressure to be well-rounded and as close to perfect as possible.
This is also a problem in itself because we end up doing things and acting certain ways merely for society and not for ourselves. We study to be smart, work hard to be successful, practice to be a good athlete, fix ourselves up to be good-looking, and socialize to be popular, not because that is what we want but because that is what we think society wants of us. We do things and act certain ways merely for our place in society, not for ourselves. Sometimes we get caught up trying to live up to society’s expectations of us that we forget to stop and think about what we truly want for ourselves.
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