Riya Mishra
A content writer in the process of creating strong content.
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Just now finished with writing something that I find quite deep.
Do share your thoughts on this.
Think outside the box! But what if
Instagram is the new box.
What living life meant to you before your feed shaped it for
you?
Instagram flattened everything that was
ever meant to be personal — love, success, happiness — into one universal performance.
And in doing so it made millions of people feel like they're failing at a life
that was never even theirs to live. Instagram sells you a
one-size-fits-all life in a world where no two lives are the same. And the
tragedy is people are measuring their real, complex, unique lives against that
template and feeling like they're failing.
Instagram hijacked the definition of love
for women — and it's quietly destroying real relationships.
Somewhere between the reels and the
quotes and the perfectly curated couple photos — someone decided what love is
supposed to look like. And we all just... agreed.
The checklist appeared quietly. Flowers.
Good morning texts. Hourly check-ins. Surprise plans. Grand gestures. The
"princess treatment." And before we even noticed, we stopped asking
whether we felt loved — we started checking whether the boxes were ticked.
I used to believe something different.
Something that felt more true to me than anything my feed ever showed. I
believed that your partner has a life — a full, complicated, demanding life. A
career they're building. Responsibilities they're carrying. A mind that's
constantly working. And that their love for you lives inside all of that —
quietly, steadily, without needing to perform itself every hour.
Love was never meant to be a calendar
reminder. It was never meant to be a burden someone carries alongside
everything else and checks in on just to prove it's still there.
But Instagram made me question that.
Slowly. Without asking permission. Suddenly the person who didn't text back
immediately felt distant. The partner who forgot to call felt absent. The
relationship that was genuinely peaceful started feeling like it was missing
something — because it didn't look like what the feed said it should look like.
And that's the part nobody talks about.
Instagram didn't just show us highlight reels. It rewrote our expectations. It
handed us a universal template for love and said — this is the standard.
Measure your relationship against this.
But here's what that template never
accounted for — people are not universal. Love is the most personal thing a
human being can feel and express. You can give it freely but you cannot demand
someone return it in the exact shape you saw on a screen. Your partner's way of
loving you might look like showing up quietly. It might look like giving you
space to breathe. It might look like building something alongside you without
making noise about it.
Real love — the kind that actually holds
you — should feel peaceful. It should feel comforting and strengthening. It
should give you room to grow, not constrict you. It should never make you feel
like a task on someone's to-do list. And it should never turn into a
performance just to prove it exists.
So before you measure your relationship
against a checklist you didn't write — ask yourself honestly. Who wrote that
checklist? Who decided that's what love looks like?
Because I don't think it was you.
But Instagram didn't stop at love.
And somewhere along the way Instagram
also decided what a successful life looks like. And just like with love — we
quietly agreed.
The template is familiar by now. Your
own business. A million in the bank. Two or three international trips every six
months. A house that looks like it belongs in an interior design magazine.
Achieve all of that and you've made it. Fall short of any of it and somewhere
deep inside — you start wondering if you're behind.
But here's what that template never
shows you. Life has never been fair. Not even close. Every single person starts
at a completely different place. With different resources. Different burdens.
Different people depending on them. And for some people — their
responsibilities are bigger than their age ever prepared them for.
The person who didn't build a business
wasn't less brave or less ambitious than the one who did. They just couldn't
afford the risk. Not because of lack of vision — but because their community,
their family, the weight of everything they were born into — didn't give them
that option. And Instagram never shows you that part. It only shows you the
highlight. Never the starting point.
I have watched people quietly kill their
dreams to carry the weight of their family's expectations and needs. And here's
what I noticed — they aren't broken. They aren't bitter. They found happiness
through a completely different door. Some found it in the love of a partner who
stayed. Some found it in watching their children live the life they couldn't.
Some found it in a quiet dignity that no reel could ever capture.
And if you ever slow down enough to
actually sit with these people — really sit with them — you will find something
you never expected to exist. A wisdom so specific, so earned, so deeply human
that no algorithm could ever surface it. Because it wasn't built through
success. It was built through living.
That's the thing about success Instagram
will never understand. It isn't one thing. It isn't one path. It isn't one
number in a bank account or one size of house. For one person success is
building an empire. For another it's giving their children the education they
never had. Both are real. Both are valid. Both required everything that person
had to give.
Money matters. Career matters. I won't
pretend otherwise. But they are not the measure of a life. They never were.
The real measure — the one that actually
means something when everything quiets down — is the peace you carry. The peace
that comes from the character you built, the wisdom you earned, the
relationships you chose and the lessons every single phase of your life taught
you.
Instagram can't post that. It doesn't
photograph well. But it's the only thing that's ever really mattered.
Tell me — what did life mean to you
before the feed got to it?
Also I am a content and copy writer looking for new projects.
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