Catching The Thief Of Joy Red-Handed
How to quit comparison, an age-old habit exacerbated by the digital era.
By Alana Cloud-Robinson
Illustrations by Zoey Kim
Published
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The urge to compare ourselves to others is a strange vice—it provides no comfort or pleasure, but many of us still find the time to make a near-constant habit of it. It becomes a compulsion—an addiction to hurting our own feelings—but one that’s so common we often don’t even recognize the need to quit.
“Just don’t.” This is the most common advice I’ve been given on how to resist temptation. I’ve been told not to look, not to worry, not to analyze—to keep my eyes on my own paper. However, the haunting inescapability of social media has made it difficult to avert our eyes from the endless database designed to catalog and quantify the beauty, leisure, and achievements of others. It’s all too easy to spend hours pressing our faces to the glass of various digital windows, burning with longing at every swipe of our thumb.
I’ll be the first to admit I’ve snuck a glance at Instagram while sitting at my desk to see that someone I know peripherally is on yet another European vacation, their latest post—an artful potpourri of pictures revealing views from a speedboat, their perfectly tanned bikini body, and a delicious platter of fresh paella—serving as a knife to the gut. In the real world, I’ve hit the town on a night when I just didn't feel comfortable in my skin, only to catch sight of someone across the room who embodied everything I believed would make me perfect—someone dazzlingly self-assured whose presence alone slicked my throat with an oily sense of envy. I’ve read or listened to or gazed at a piece of art that filled me with deep admiration while simultaneously whispering to myself, “Why haven’t you accomplished something like this?”
Over time, I’ve realized that, like so many addictions, there’s a stubborn root of shame beneath this impulse to compare. In truth, the greatest source of envy is not the vacation, the pretty face, or the artwork itself, but the shameful notion that I’m not living my life to the fullest extent.
Under my surface-level covetousness, I want fulfillment and ease, self-confidence, and the courage to create. With this realization, there’s a choice to be made: I can let these stunning accomplishments taunt me for what I don’t have, or I can allow them to serve as reminders of the passion, drive, and deep desire lying in wait somewhere within me. I can resign myself to motionless voyeurism, or I can allow myself to be moved.
Like so many things in life, it’s a shift of perception—recognizing the subtle difference between envy and inspiration that can set us free to be ourselves wholly and completely.
Quitting comparison is far easier said than done—there are good days and days when I must remember to be gentle with myself—but one thing is certain: when I commit to making the most of the life I’ve been given, choose to come as I am and honor my unique purpose to the best of my abilities, it becomes a hell of a lot harder to dream of being anyone else.