Can Society Make You Happy?

It's so tempting to want to be accepted, especially by someone you admire or look up to, like a beautiful person or a person with an important job or someone who you think is tres cool.  I notice that when I feel this way, I don't like myself.  I see myself as inferior and I want to think of ways to make myself more attractive to others.  I wish I had a nice job so others will be impressed and look at me with approval and find me worthy of their company.  I think of ways to improve myself because I have to be good.

I have a cousin who is tall and smart and sort of an elite.  When she is nice to me, I feel fantastic.  So I ask myself...why can't I feel fantastic anyway, with or without her approval.  I guess that deep down I must be believing that I'm not good enough unless she pays attention to me even for just one minute.  So I dress a certain way and talk a certain way.  This gives me status, which I prize so much I guess, because I see how important those people are, in a class of their own.  And that's what I want for myself, if I have to admit it, because I think that that would make me finally a happy person.

Life, though, is difficult from that perspective, which is that I'm not good enough just by being my ordinary self, flawed at that because that's what human beings are.  The struggle for me is to know deeply that I am a good person, and that I'm good enough no matter what.  And anyone who does not love me is just mistaken.  That's okay too, because people are simply imperfect human beings.  I don't need to be wealthy and beautiful and smart to be a good person.  There are no requirements except that I've been born.

I know it's hard to be our own person because we want to be accepted by society.  Who wants to be an outcast?  Not me.  But when I really think about it, it is better for me to be alone if that's the price I pay to be just myself...no strings attached.  Reality is always better than the ideal.  If you strive for the ideal, you will get depressed.  It's better to be just you because you can never be like another person.  We're all different no matter how hard we try to be like someone else.