In my latest post, I mentioned that I might write something about comparison. So here I am less than a week later.
I do not know whether it is social media, my personality, or simply the fact that we live in a society obsessed with performance, but sooner or later we all end up comparing ourselves to someone.
I certainly did. I still do. Less than before, perhaps, but enough to know that I have not completely escaped the trap. Over the years, though, I noticed that comparison kept changing shape. What started as one habit slowly moved through different stages.
The first stage is comparing yourself to other people. The obvious one. Someone has a better career, a larger house, more money. For me it was the simple things: being able to sit for hours on a chair (being hyperactive ain’t that fun, sometimes…), finding joy in doing things I hate, or just having figured life out before I did.
This kind of comparison rarely produces anything useful. You are comparing your backstage with somebody else’s public performance. And most of the time, what you see ain’t the real deal. You know your fears, your failures, your contradictions. You only know their results. And even when the comparison is accurate, it is still unfair. Different parents, different talents, different opportunities, different wounds. You are comparing stories that were never meant to be compared.
Eventually I found what looked like a more mature approach. Instead of comparing myself with others, I started comparing myself with my former self. Am I more patient than I was a year ago? More disciplined? Have I published more or earned more money? This felt healthier, and in many ways it was. Yet after a while I began to wonder whether I was still playing the same game under different rules. The person I was ten years ago wanted different things, feared different things, and measured success differently. Even my cell structure is entirely different from the one of 2016. In some sense I was still comparing myself with another person. The only difference was that this person happened to have my name.
Then came a third stage, thanks to an Instagram post linking to a very interesting research. It is impossible not to compare, but the trick is comparing with those who have less.
This made lots of sense to me. So I started practicing the lesson. Whenever I complained about work, I remembered people who could not find a job. Whenever I complained about travelling, I remembered people who could not afford to leave their hometown. Whenever I complained about family problems, I remembered people who had lost their parents, or never knew them in the first place. This brought something valuable into my life: gratitude.
But it also revealed another danger: pride.
There is a reason pride occupies such a central place in Christian thought. Lucifer falls because of pride. Eve reaches for the fruit because she wants to become like God. Judas places his own judgment above the one he was supposed to trust. Different stories, different circumstances, the same temptation: elevating the self. And there’s a reason why the two greatest models Christianity offers, Jesus and Mary, embody humility – one accepting the Father’s will unto death, the other one answering with a simple fiat -. If pride is the root of the fall, humility is the root of redemption.
That is the problem with comparing ourselves to those who have less. Gratitude can quietly turn into superiority. The thought shifts from “I am grateful for what I have” to “at least I am not like them.” The comparison is still alive. It has simply changed direction.
That realization led me to what I now consider the fourth stage. I call it NETL: Not Everyone’s That Lucky.
The difference is subtle but it matters. In the third stage I am still looking at somebody else. In the NETL stage I am looking at the gift itself.
I still have both my parents. NETL.
I had all four grandparents alive until I was twenty. NETL.
I have friends I can call when life becomes difficult. NETL.
I have two legs, two arms, and two eyes. I can choose where I live, I can spend my days working on things that interest me. NETL.
That simple acronym rewires the brain. The focus is no longer on who has more or less than I do. The focus is on recognizing that many things we treat as normal are not normal at all. They are gifts. They could easily have been absent from our lives.
Perhaps there is also a fifth stage. I am not sure. If it exists, it is probably the stage where comparison disappears altogether. No scoreboards, no rankings, no measuring, no need to work out whether someone is ahead or behind. Just gratitude, emptiness, and presence. Just accepting reality without immediately turning it into a competition. I suspect saints spend most of their time there. I certainly do not.
For now I find myself somewhere between the third and fourth stage, learning to see my life less as a list of inconveniences and more as a collection of undeserved gifts. Many of the things I complain about would be answers to someone else’s prayers. Remembering that does not solve every problem, but it helps me keep them in perspective.
After all, not everyone’s that lucky.
