more challenge

If you’re on Instagram, maybe you’ve seen or heard of the “until tomorrow” challenge. In short, the challenge is to post a few embarrassing pictures of yourself for 24 hours. To get nominated to do the challenge, you simply like someone else’s “until tomorrow” post, and that person messages you all of these details that I’ve just spoiled for you in this blog.

For those of us still confused about where this challenge came from, I am sorry to inform you that I have absolutely no idea where any of this originated.

The night I got nominated for the challenge, I was casually scrolling through Instagram. Eventually, I began to notice that almost every single post was captioned “until tomorrow”. Thoroughly confused (but amused) by the random photos my friends were posting, I was liking the posts left and right. I loved seeing the goofy throwbacks to middle school, the funny videos after getting wisdom teeth taken out, and more. I had no idea that with every like of a post, I was dooming myself to being nominated for this crazy challenge. I’d like to think I’m the only one that naively liked the posts without realizing the consequences.

Soon after liking the posts, I got messages from my friends saying that since I liked their photos, I had to post at least one embarrassing picture as well. Immediately, I thought this was ridiculous. No way was I going to post weird pictures of myself for every single person to see. I like to keep the embarrassing photos of myself in places where no one can see them. Ever. Needless to say, challenge NOT accepted.

A little after I was challenged to post those embarrassing pictures, I decided to rethink my decision. Looking through my Instagram at all of the funny pictures had truly brightened my day. I even found myself smiling and laughing at posts from people I didn’t know as well. It was so refreshing to not see the usual “perfect” Instagram posts. I began questioning my decision to not join in on the fun. Why should I take myself so seriously? We are all stuck at home looking through social media (a bit too much…), so why not accept the challenge? Maybe it will brighten someone’s day like my friends’ posts did for me. So, I posted this wonderful gem from when I was about 12:

Side note: this photo is your reminder for the day not to take yourself too seriously either.

We all have accepted more challenges recently, and not jut social media challenges. While being at home these past few weeks, I’ve realized that for probably the first time in history, the majority of people across our country are all doing the same thing: staying at home. We’ve all accepted the challenge of changing our usual lives, and we’ve taken serious actions to help save people. It’s so admirable to see everyone unite for the better in a time where things are definitely not the best.

Even when staying home becomes proposes more challenge each day, we continue to make sacrifices. Many of those sacrifices have been negative and disheartening, but what if we chose to accept more positive challenges? The word challenge can often make us think that the task at hand is difficult. In reality, however, when we accept more challenges, we grow and learn more. We make positive changes in our lives, and other’s lives. We just have to challenge ourselves to do more with our time.

Let’s bring more challenge into our days at home.

We have the opportunity to serve our communities in unique and special ways. Writing thank you cards to emergency personnel, sending letters to nursing home residents who can’t see family right now, mowing the lawn for a neighbor, and making daily calls to those who need extra encouragement are just a few ways that we can accept more challenges.

Let’s choose to challenge ourselves a little bit more than usual today.

There’s more to challenge.

There’s more to it all.