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“Life isn’t about having two hundred friends. Life isn’t about having a lot of clothes. Life isn’t about whether you have a boyfriend/girlfriend or not. Life isn’t about whether things are going well in your life. Life isn’t about how well you get along with your siblings, or how you don’t get along with them. Life isn’t about how your hair is styled, or whether your eyebrows are plucked perfectly. Life isn’t about how many championships you’ve gone to or how many trophies you have. Life isn’t about the team that’s going to make it to the next Super Bowl. Life isn’t about whether you can play an instrument well. Life isn’t about how high your grades are or how low they are. Life isn’t about who’s going to make it to the next round of American Idol. Life isn’t about how healthy you are. Life isn’t about how many social events you go to. Life isn’t about what others think about you. Life isn’t about what you think of yourself. Life is about what God thinks of you. Life is about how much time you spend with God. Life is about getting to know Him – and falling in love with Him.”--Unknown Author

 

Sometimes, I think that people expect too much out of life. They expect to have two hundred friends, they expect to have a boyfriend/girlfriend, they expect to go to many social events, they expect to do well when playing their instrument. Sometimes it gets to the point where they get angry when things don’t go according to plan. They yell at God, “This isn’t what I ordered! My life is supposed to have…” and on and on. People can expect things so much that it no longer becomes a goal or a want – it becomes a must-have. You must have a successful job, you must have a successful relationship, you must have the perfect body.

 

The culture doesn’t exactly help. Music tells us that we have to have perfect bodies, perfect boyfriends/girlfriends, etc. The media tells us that we must make it to the championship, we must be popular, or we must be rich. Shows which have no real purpose other than to make us envious of other people’s lifestyles definitely don’t help. Hollywood shows all of these beautiful people, with beautiful clothes, hair, and houses. It paints a picture of a place where everything is happy because everyone is rich. It seems that everywhere you go someone is whispering to you, “You’ll be truly happy if you just have…”

 

While some people would blame only the culture, I think it goes much deeper than that. There’s always been a pressure to have certain things or to be certain things--and that pressure has always come from human beings. If peer pressure didn’t exist, would people really care whether or not they had the latest fashions? Would people really care whether or not they had a boyfriend/girlfriend? I think that in most cases, they wouldn’t. It’s peer pressure that makes a chubby girl spend hours crying in front of the mirror because she’s just not as skinny as she “must be.”

 

I have found, though, that it is possible to lead a life free from peer pressure. But that freedom only comes when you only care what God thinks, not what man thinks. When we get to heaven, is God really going to ask us, “so just how many hours did you spend at the mall?” Of course not. He’s going to ask us how many hours we spent chasing after Him. He’s going to ask how many friends we helped through difficult times. He’s going to ask whether we’ve shared Him with someone. Did we spend our whole lives trying to please Him, ourselves, or others?

 

What things do you value most? Sports, fashion, friends, or God? At the end of your life, what will people remember you for? Will they remember you for being a person who would do anything to get what you want, including throwing away several friendships? Will they remember you as only being concerned with yourself? Will they remember you as being insecure because you weren’t the person you “should” have been? Or will they remember you for being humble and taking the low place? Will they remember you for leading a life that glorified God?

 

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