A feed where everything is perfect
Miya scrolled through the photos: breakfast by the sea, hugs in the rain, flawless smiles. Then she looked at her own kitchen: two mugs, a bag of cookies, and Leo searching for a second spoon. "Everyone else has such a beautiful life," she said.
An unexpected comparison
"Everyone else?" Leo poked his head out of the pantry. Miya showed him the screen. "They have romance even on Tuesdays." He looked at the picture. "We have Tuesdays too." The joke didn't land. Miya wasn't angry; she just suddenly felt like their ordinary evening wasn't pretty enough.
A five-minute plan
"Let's take a pretty photo too," Leo suggested. They cleared the table, repositioned the lamp, and arranged the cookies on a plate like they were in a café. Leo opened the camera app. The kitchen instantly looked almost magazine-worthy. "Now we just have to look like we didn't spend twenty minutes moving that lamp around."
Shot number seven
The first shot came out too dark. In the second, Leo blinked. In the third, Miya was laughing. In the fourth, the cookie bag photobombed the frame. Finally, they sat down close together, but a mug tipped over, spilling tea on a napkin. Leo reached to save it, Miya grabbed her phone, and the camera accidentally snapped one more frame.
The picture
The photo didn't have any flawless smiles. Leo was holding a napkin, Miya was laughing, and a small puddle of tea gleamed on the table. "Should I delete it?" he asked. Miya zoomed in on the photo. Their faces looked ridiculous. But it instantly brought back how hard they'd tried not to burst out laughing. "No. Let's keep this one."
An unfiltered conversation
"I wasn't actually upset about the photo," Miya confessed. "Then what was it?" "When you look at how other people live for too long, you start feeling like you're missing something." Leo sat down next to her. "But we don't know what happened before their photo or after." "True, but we know what happened before ours," she replied.
Not for public approval
They decided not to post the photo. Not out of shyness, but because they wanted to keep that evening just for themselves. Leo put the lamp back where it belonged. Miya put the kettle on. The cookies went back into the bag. The kitchen stopped being a set and went back to being a place where they could just sit side by side.
A little question
Before falling asleep, Miya pulled up that random snapshot. "This is our best picture in a while." "Because I'm heroically saving a napkin?" Leo asked. "Because we're real." How often do we compare our entire lives to someone else's carefully chosen few seconds?