Why is Comparison the Thief of Joy?
Because you set yourself up to experience suffering that way.
Comparison is the thief of joy because it’s endless. There is always someone or something you can compare yourself to. That person has it better than you. Those people look better than you do. Their home/car/yard is nicer than yours. Comparison will always find someone for you to see and feel less than.
Similarly, comparison can make you feel superior to others. But that comes with a price, because if they become your equal or by comparison “better” than you, you’ll feel awful.
Everywhere you turn, people, places, and things are being compared. Politics is all about comparing candidate “A” and candidate “B” and what they stand for, how they will help or harm you, and an endless list of other matters.
This society is hell-bent on comparing this, that, and the other thing. You name it, it will be held up to “X” and “Y” and compared for quality, righteousness, good, bad, and everything else you can imagine. Then, making comparisons to dominant, artificial values applied to it, tied to fear, is a major factor of why this society you and I live in is a fear-based society.
Fear is a false motivator
Every single advertisement for any good, service, or whatever employs comparison. This car is better than that car; our food is tastier and healthier than the other guy’s food; if you don’t buy this, you will be viewed by others as less intelligent/attractive/caring/etc; it never ends and perpetuates largely false lack, scarcity, insufficiency, and via these, fear.
This can be both subtle and blatant. The cutesy notion of FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out – is blatant but disguised as reasonable and adorable. Yet it’s frequently employed to coerce you into buying or doing something lest you suffer.
That’s the truth of most of the fear in this fear-based society that you and I live in. The thing you fear you won’t have or receive isn’t the object of the fear you feel. It’s the suffering that will result from missing out, not being a part of, and not having that tangible or intangible thing.
To quote Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist:
“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.”
You’re not afraid of being judged by your peers for not buying the McGuffin, you’re afraid of the suffering that will result from being shunned, treated as lesser, disregarded, or whatever else happens after.
Nobody wants to suffer. I could give you a slew of examples of this truth, but I think it’s obvious. Suffering is uncomfortable and nobody wants to be uncomfortable.
So, fear is frequently employed to motivate you and me to do things, buy things, be things, and more. Then, to get you and me to buy, be, and do endlessly more, we’re compared and encouraged to compare ourselves and go from there.
Letting comparison be the thief of joy is a choice
It’s natural to look at other people and compare yourself to them. Part of the process of getting to know someone, even someone you don’t meet in person, involves examination, which inevitably includes comparison. I’m shorter than him or I’m thinner than her or my car is nicer than theirs automatically comes up during the process.
Where this gets twisted is when comparison leads you to feel bad. Or worse, to pass judgment on yourself. That’s when I’m shorter than him leads to and less desirable, and I’m thinner than her leads to I’m less curvy and less attractive, and my car is nicer than theirs leads to but it’s still not very new, and so on.
This can become an endless, joy-stealing act if it goes unchecked. Before you know it, often without you ever realizing it, you find that you’re constantly comparing yourself and your life to others, and finding more lack, scarcity, and insufficiency in your life to feel bad about. Your joy is thus stolen by comparison.
This is, however, a choice. You have the power to make another. Sure, comparison on first meeting a person, or seeing someone on the screen, is natural. Acting on it, taking it further, and/or more closely examining it, however, is a choice.
You can choose to take I’m shorter than him, and either make nothing of it or follow it with and that’s okay. You get to choose what comes next, and if you will compare yourself further.
This is, of course, wholly on you.
This is your reality
The only person in your head, heart, and soul is you. Nobody else is in there. There’s nobody who can think or feel for you, but you.
While it often feels or appears like other people are comparing themselves to you, or judging you, this is usually not true. And, even if it is, it doesn’t matter. Just as they aren’t you, you’re not them.
Yet it’s all too easy to believe that you are being weighed and measured by other people. So, in response, you compare yourself to them on many levels. This is, ultimately, a choice, of course.
While all initial, visceral reactions simply are, what happens after is for you to choose. Do you go down the road of comparison or do you move on and choose to just be?
You have the power to choose. It might not feel like much, but it’s enormous because that means your reality is what you make it. Thus, if you compare yourself to anyone or anything and feel bad resulting from that, you can change it. You can choose not to compare yourself beyond the initial observations made.
Comparison is the thief of joy if you allow it to be. When you don’t, you can find your joy in many places, even in the face of someone you might feel as if you are being compared to/feel the need to compare yourself to.
This is your reality, and you get to shape it how you desire. Joy is yours when you are mindful of thieves who might try to take it from you.
Recognizing the comparison is the thief of joy isn’t hard
It’s all about practicing mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and approach to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge that in-depth comparison leads to unhappiness, struggle, and suffering, you can choose to not engage in it. Knowing that comparison causes suffering, and then choosing not to compare yourself to other people and such, you can more easily find joy and other positive emotions and suffer far less and less often.
This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.
Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens greater dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can recognize, explore, and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
The better aware you are of yourself here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself it can spread to those around you for their empowerment.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the five-hundred and forty-ninth (549) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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