THE DECEPTION OF MODERN LIFE - GUARD YOUR GREAT THOUGHT
- Nina Sekulovic Art
- May 24, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: May 25, 2024

How much is given to them, from the genetic lottery, the dream home, the wonderful friends and partners, the world in the palm, on the same planet, where so many of them, from blood and flesh, desperately fight for naked life? While contemplating, new enchanting photos come from one and then from the other end of the world. In their hands, they inevitably hold some of the stunning products, chocolate cookies, and colorful cocktails, which strangely with these perfect dolls look like elixirs of physical beauty and charm, copied in infinitely many copies. More importantly, they have to look like that turns into must have all that and even more terrifying you must love just like that. You are in a hurry, you are in such a hurry to love so perfectly and passionately, because love has to be loud, easy, seductive, aesthetically beautiful and likable, it has to evoke in the other person the thoughtless "I want it too". Why keep silent about all those whose stories are permanently waiting, the resigned follower, remains asking in vain, how come they are so happy?
Are today's social media feeding our impotence, are they drowning us in a utopia that you have to follow and live the perfection of other people's lives, while your time, your will, your apathy, flows away irretrievably. Is the thousands of years old thought still valid today that an examined life is not worth living. Hardly anyone would be able to say right away what is his/her most important thought, the one that he/she must complete, that must not wait until there is no more time and he/she embraces the earth. But that thought does not arise just like that, it takes time, it takes experience, it takes time to touch the ground in defeat and then awkwardly stand up, to fall again and again, it takes years to know what you want, but not so much that one would slip into the shell of meaninglessness and fate. As a candle is added, it becomes scarier to not find this great thought, an idea that begins as an inspired thought, as an original and the guide trough childhood, pushed aside over time, silenced in a corner.
Social media did not create injustice, they did not invent evil, jealousy, narcissism, and destructiveness. Still, there is something in their world, pardon in our world, different, something is more difficult and weirder and more complex and senseless than ever before. There is one good advice, if you want t to have a good conversation with someone, place a mirror behind the chair you are sitting in. The one sitting in front will be less frowning, unkind, rough because no one wants to see in his mirror his own unattractiveness. The mirror is man's fear, in the same way that social media is man's fear, everything must be smiling, well, nice and attractive, or the man will not stand before him. All these profiles on social networks are mirrors that we forget to conduct essential conversations, which means something, that reveals a piece that is not skin, makeup, expensive fabrics, and glittering accessories. A modern-day man is hungry for a truth that is not beautified, packaged, or preconceived in order to sell and replace for something else, tired of finding new, appealing, and socially acceptable identities. The viewer gets tired again and again and paradoxically remains riveted to the screen.
Going back to those images from the beginning, they are easy to break in a split second. That perfect doll with a cookie and cocktails, has been starving for a long time and has long wanted to be in someone else's shoes, but luckily or unluckily we all trust her seductive smile. You know, the two who fit so perfectly, love the other two, luckily or unluckily, they are no longer in the picture. The man who is being buried right now and is not on the news helped hundreds of people and traveled the whole world, led an incredible life, but in his honor there are no thousands of RIP messages on social media. If there is any message today, a message that warns, secretly screams in the background, then it is these four words - Guard your great thought. Otherwise, it will get somewhere along the way in the noise, the race, the chaos of those others who laugh and seduce wonderfully. The deceptiveness of modern life is exactly that voyeurism of the perfections of others, while yours fades because it is simply not perfect, it is not like theirs, and it never had to be, it just had to be real, be lived and be yours. A child in you has long awaited to come to the table.
The text was published in a collection of essays and posts "Word in Network".
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