There is always going to be someone who seems to have more, someone who you are convinced has to be happier with their life than you are with yours. Why does it have to be this way? Why are we so absorbed in competing with the people around us? Why do we so often attribute other people’s happiness to our own insecurities? This is something that everyone goes through, yet it can make us feel so completely, utterly alone: like you’re nobody’s first choice.
When I say “first choice” I mean being someone else’s “go-to,” the person they count on and pick above the rest. Why is this so important to us? Because being someone’s first choice means always feeling included, it means always being wanted. Everyone hates being a last resort. The smallest, most insignificant things can trigger this feeling and flip our entire perspective on life: having to sit in the chair at the very end of the row, not getting an invitation to lunch, feeling excluded from a conversation. We let this poisonous feeling eat us from the inside out, until we begin to discount all of the best parts of our lives. All of this, because one little thing didn’t go exactly our way.
Destroying this feeling of exclusion is simple: stop relying on other people. That sounds bad, but hear me out. I don’t mean stop trusting your friends and seeking out people you can count on, and I don’t mean that you should be suspicious of everyone and always assume the worst of them. (I’ve been there, and it is a horrible way to live your life.)
I mean that you have to accept that your friends are not perfect, and they never will be. They may get extremely annoying at times, they won’t always do the right thing, and they will disappoint you. One of the hardest things to learn that basically takes a lifetime to understand is that you just cannot link other people’s imperfections and hurtful actions to your doubts about yourself. Of course, you need to be surrounded by good-hearted people who truly do care about you, but even those kinds of people are imperfect.
The significance that we place on other people’s thoughts and actions only solidifies the fact that we desperately need God in our lives. We were made with an inherent desire to be loved and to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, hence why we so desperately need the coveted stamp of approval from our society.
Isaiah 55:8-9 reads,
“’My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,’ says the Lord. ‘And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.’ “
God is the only one who can never disappoint. He made all of us imperfect so that we would seek after Him and His perfection. Relying solely on other people will always lead to a feeling of emptiness and a hunger for something more, because God is the only one who will always choose you first.
