Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
― Oscar Wilde, Irish poet
Comparison is the thief of joy. When you compare yourself with someone else, you can never be happy with who you are.
There is always going to be someone else who will be smarter, richer, owns more things, is better-looking, seems more organised, started younger, has a better body, has a successful career and the list goes one. When we compare, our perception comes from a state of insecurity and it eats at our self-confidence.
A lot of what we perceive may not even be true. Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn have many manufactured perceptions about love, success and perfection that are created for followers to think these are ideals to follow. They really are not – they are a virtual make believe.
Movies and songs give you a hyped up, pumped up version of perfect love, perfect marriages, perfect families, perfect businesses and so on, but in reality people constantly struggle in many ways to even get there.
We don’t really know what goes on behind the scenes of whatever it is we compare – so, just don’t.
The man with the big house and big cars and fancy vacations may be drowning in loans. That perfect beauty may be struggling inside with insecurity, starving herself to look that way. That perfect marriage may not be so perfect after all, so many marriages are happy fronts that are put up to hide dissatisfaction and betrayals that no one else can see.
So comparison is really a pointless exercise. When you start comparing, you just won’t know when to stop, and your whole life becomes a perspective of something else. And you will never be grounded in your own reality.
So here’s what you do. You focus on yourself. And what you can do. And compare yourself with the person you were. The only comparison that is real, that matters and that will be productive is comparing the person you were to the person you are now and to the person you will become in the future.
In that process, you will know exactly you are and what you are capable are. Because you are looking within and not seeking validation from outside.
To become your own best friend and cheerleader is perhaps the best thing you can achieve in life. It’s a kind of strength that helps you fly to your highest visions and desires.
And then one day, you will look back and see for yourself that the people you were comparing yourself to were not even at your level. That you, on your own, believing in yourself, have done so much better for yourself in every way.
And that brings me to the topic of being yourself.
We don’t realise this often, but most of us after a certain age, stop being ourselves. We keep trying very hard to be someone else because of this very same thing – comparison. This need for comparison and yardsticks are a product of constant suggestions from movies, advertisements, ‘authoritative’ bodies that bombard you daily with persuasion on who you should become and how lacking you are if you are not that way.
So in the end, we are never happy with ourselves. We are constantly chasing an illusion of who we should be. What we should wear, do, own to be perceived as the ideal human being AS suggested by narratives around you.
The only time we are truly free is from birth to about four years old and then the indoctrination takes over. The optimism, fearlessness, love for all animals and mankind regardless of race or skin colour, unbridled happiness in the simplest, smallest things in life and extreme curiosity and wonder in everything around us that children so easily possess is hardly ever found in adults because the system has wiped out all of that…well, very systematically.
And for the rest of our life, we trudge through routines and duties searching for all that we lost that was taken from us when we were children, wondering deep down what we are fighting for, angry in a subconscious level for losing something that we know is our birthright – but not knowing what. This loss makes up deeply disturbed deep down, creating depression and anxiety in many people in ways they don’t understand.
You cannot change the system, at least not yet, but you can change you. You start by consciously knowing that there is a barrage of influx that makes you feel guilty, ashamed and regretful that you are not the many things that you think you are supposed to be. Remember that you are only supposed to be one thing – you. Gloriously you. Remember who you are, and be it. Go within, find yourself again and love yourself enough to be free. It takes time, but it’s worth the world and the wait.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune. Feedback can reach the writer at beatrice@ibrasiagroup.com
