Would you describe yourself as a happy person who gets sad sometimes or a sad person with happy moments? Towards the end of last semester, I was having brunch with two friends and we were having a conversation about happiness. I somehow expressed my conclusion that I am a happy person who experiences sad moments and not the other way around. One of the guys asked me what I think causes me to be happy. Although I knew he was a non-believer, I said, “I honestly think it’s my faith that does.” He asked me if I thought anything else could contribute to happiness, considering that he didn’t believe in God. I thought about it for a while until I came up with something I felt has contributed to my own propensity towards “happiness.” I started writing this blog from a completely neutral perspective, one I thought could be relatable for a non-Christian, but the more I wrote, the more difficult it became to separate my faith bringing joy from what I am going to discuss as a contributing factor. I realized how much I could connect the two subjects. So I decided to separate it into two different posts – this will be more neutral, and the other will relate the idea more to faith and the gospel.
Now, imagine you are playing a game you have never played. No one tells you what it entails. The first time you play it, you make a score of 50 points. You keep playing and your range stays around the same 50, until at some point you score 100. Of course, you’d be excited. Imagine that you suddenly start scoring single digit numbers. That’d obviously be disappointing given the fact that you know you’re capable of scoring 100. So you push yourself, you fight hard, and you score 200! CELEBRATIONNNN!!!
Now, imagine that you’re so excited about your 200 that you start preaching it to the world. You even find that everyone you speak to has scored only single digits, which makes you feel even more excited about the 50 you achieved on the first attempt. You begin to think you’ve made it, and there’s no need to even try to beat your 200 score. However, you find out that someone else scored 3958.
Would your excitement for your 200 change? I feel like natural human inclination might cause it to. Here you were thinking that 200 was an amazing score when someone else scored almost 4000?? Are you excited for that person or envious? Does the green-eyed monster come out? You’re probably bitter and raging and are too preoccupied with feelings of inadequacy to reflect on the fact that you’ve progressively achieved your 200 score. Your motivation is now the idea of beating that guy who got a higher score than you rather than the fact that you’ve made your strides independently. Imagine going through ALLLL of that to realize that the game the person played and scored 3958 in was a completely different game with a different scoring system than the one you are playing.
If you didn’t get it from my lovely, well thought-out analogy, I’m trying to demonstrate the effects of comparison. I hate comparison. Whether it’s good comparison or bad comparison, whether you can ask me if I’m at a “better” place than someone else and I can conceitedly say yes, or ashamedly say no. Like why do we even need to have this conversation?
Honestly, this is something I’ve openly confronted people who have expectations of me about when they try to base it on others. No, I don’t need to be doing something great because another person is doing that great thing. No, I’m not going to entertain a conversation about whether or not my college or major or life is better than that person’s because my life is my life and their life is theirs. I am quite content with mine and I genuinely hope they are too, but our lives are two separate entities and my level of contentment should not and will not be based on my life relative to theirs. I’m just out here trying to live my best life. So please do not do that comparison work for me and try to pull me into that scheme. For in a way it seems like you cannot be happy about my achievements or someone else’s unless mine somehow transcend theirs. That’s not how I live my life and I literally have been living to avoid comparison since I realized how much it almost ruined me.
“Comparison is the thief of joy” is a platitude that holds SO MUCH truth. I’m not going to lie and say I’ve never compared myself to another person, but I can truly say I’ve tried to push away any thought that would lead to me comparing myself to someone else whether it is to make myself feel better about myself, or worse. I grew up being compared to my older sister – “why can’t you be like her in this way or that?” But sometimes the tables turn in that people congratulate me because they think I’m “better” in some way. You’d think I should be happy because at least they’re saying something good about me.
Thing is, I cannot accept the idea that I’m “doing good” because of some relative measure that you have imposed for your ideal of people. Like am I only doing good because I now match up to your ideal better than my sister does? Or would you be proud of me independently? Secondly, the thing about comparison is this – it is never consistent in its praise or lack thereof. When life revolves around what you’re doing with respect to some other, it becomes a capricious competition that can never have an objective winner because at any moment, based on some arbitrary quality, you get to pick who has the upper-hand. And there are so many judges for this competition, that a consensus on a winner can never be achieved, especially when you become as invested in “winning” as people do in choosing a winner.
It takes so much mental energy to fight against the temptation to compare myself. My university is so competitive. My job is competitive. It SURROUNDS me daily, and is a bit exhausting. I honestly wish we could just scrap the whole competition. I focus on me. You focus on you. I say this in very loose terms. I’m not saying you should be selfish. In fact, I’m suggesting the opposite. Be happy for me and the milestones of my journey from 0 to 200 in my game (life), and I will be happy for you on your journey from 0 to 4000 or whatever (ok this analogy is kind of bad because I made it up lol). Just don’t let comparison steal your joy.
The other day, an old friend and I followed each other on a social media platform . She was convinced I was so happy based on my pictures and was proud of how I overcame my struggles and “found myself.” It was very flattering to say the least. However, it was concerning when she began to lament her own unhappiness and expressed wishing to find the happiness I have. None of this was based on any conversation, just my social media account. Mind you, we hadn’t spoken in some 10 years. There’s literally no way you can know how happy I am through some pictures. Yes, I’d say I’m happy, but I could very well be depressed as hell with some nice pictures. Now, you’re gonna see that and run with it saying you want my happiness? There has to be some other way that you set your standards for yourself, that doesn’t include someone else’s highlight reel reality. You literally never know what’s going on with a person beyond what they decide to let you see. There’s so much joy and peace in finding what you want independently, without looking to the left or the right. You may look in the past to remind yourself of what you’re capable of (like when you started getting those single digits after a score of 50). You can also look to see how you can improve a previous version of yourself (you know, from that 50 to that 200), but afterwards, you must look forward to some goal that’s solely based on that evaluation (Maybe a 250 can be next, and not that other person’s 4000 from a different game). You’ll literally go crazy if you use anything but yourself moving at your own pace to judge where you are and where you can practically be.
Don’t let comparison be the source of your sadness, but absolutely don’t let it be the source of your joy. “Comparison is the thief of joy” will always remain true. But sometimes it disguises itself as a temporary sense of happiness through elevation. Complacency is a real thing that can be caused by this type of comparison. It says “I can settle for where I am, given that everyone else is so behind me.” (I’m not even going to attempt to go back to the silly analogy because I think you get it.) You should always be trying to improve to a better you. There is always one, even if you can’t find anyone who has achieved it. I say that to say I think “role models” are good for you to be able to see what can be achieved in a general sense. But never let someone else be your standard. Always set your own. Preserve your joy by not letting it be tied to some other.
This is definitely not a “How to Be Happy” Self-Help Guide. But maybe you can check not being like other people off the list of things that make you sad. These reflections have not been some easy fix-it to all my woes. Just a few midnight thoughts that I feel can be useful to someone from the happy girl who sometimes gets sad :))
P.S. Before you come for me about my use of the word “happy,” I use it in the broadest sense of the word you can think of. Some might say happiness is different from joy. But I’m not trying to be so technical here. Stay tuned for the second part of these reflections 🙂
The Tall Girl Who Falls Short 