There is a phrase I keep hearing everywhere, and honestly I am starting to dislike it. A better version of yourself. It sounds inspiring, it looks good on a poster, and people throw it around like it means something. But the more I sit with it, the more it feels hollow to me. It sounds heavy, but it carries almost no real weight. Because when someone tells me to become a better version of myself, I have one simple question that never gets a straight answer. Better based on what?

What really pushed me to write this was a moment with someone. After everything that happened between us, after the things this person had done, they said this to me:

Semoga kita bisa bertemu dengan versi yang lebih baik.

And the second I heard it, it did not feel warm at all. It felt like bullshit. It felt like an empty sentence with nothing behind it, a nice arrangement of words used to avoid taking responsibility for what had already been done. It was not a wish for growth. It was an escape route dressed up as something poetic, a clean way to walk away without ever facing the mess. That was the moment the phrase lost all its meaning for me.

Because think about it. Better according to whom? If the measurement comes from myself, then it is completely subjective. I can wake up one day, feel a little more calm, get a little more done, and declare that I am now a better version. But that is just a feeling, and feelings shift. Tomorrow I might feel worse and suddenly I am the old version again. If better only means I personally feel better, then the phrase is not a standard at all. It is just a mood wearing a fancy costume.

So maybe the measurement is supposed to come from other people. Maybe being better means other people see me as better. But the moment I lean on that, the whole thing falls apart even faster. Because other people are not one person. They are many, and each of them carries a different idea of what better looks like. To one person, a better version of me is someone who earns more. To another, it is someone who is calmer, softer, less ambitious. To someone else, it is someone louder, braver, more visible. Their expectations do not even agree with each other.

So which of them am I supposed to satisfy? If I chase one person’s version of better, I automatically fail another person’s version. There is no single finish line, because everyone is holding a different finish line and pointing at a different direction. Trying to become better in everyone’s eyes is like trying to face every direction at once. You end up facing nothing, and you exhaust yourself doing it.

This is exactly why the phrase annoys me. It pretends to be a goal, but it never comes with a definition. It tells me to improve without ever telling me the unit of measurement. It is like being told to run faster with no track, no clock, and no finish line, just the vague pressure that whatever I am right now is somehow not enough yet. And that last part is what bothers me the most. The phrase quietly assumes that the current me is a lesser version, a draft, a rough copy waiting to be corrected.

I do not think I am a rough draft. I am not a beta version of some final, polished human that everyone will finally approve of. I am just a person, changing in some ways and staying the same in others, sometimes growing and sometimes slipping, and none of that fits neatly into the word better. Growth is real, I do believe in that. But growth is specific. I can get more patient. I can get healthier. I can learn a skill I did not have. Those are things I can actually measure. A better version of myself, on the other hand, measures nothing.

So these days, when I hear that phrase, I no longer feel motivated by it. I feel a little suspicious of it. Especially when it comes from someone who uses it to slip out of the door instead of owning what they did. I would rather ask a smaller and more honest question. Better at what, and better for whom? Because vague improvement is not improvement, it is just anxiety with good marketing. And I am no longer interested in chasing a version of myself that nobody, not even me, can actually define.