Every person is unique, every feeling is valid, every person finds their individual happiness on their own path – blah blah blah. Everything may be right. But here’s the thing: sometimes it can help us to compare ourselves with other people. For example in the following situations.
Comparing yourself with other people or measuring yourself against them is certainly not the way to find yourself and your own happiness. No one person is the same as another, no one can or should be the same as another. Our personal experience, our individual experience, is in a certain respect everything and absolute for us and therefore in this respect independent of what others experience.
On the other hand, we are social creatures. We cannot live without other people. We need your feedback, your affection, your recognition. We learn to speak by comparing the sounds we make with those our parents produce and adjusting ours accordingly. We are not us to be the same as other people. But we cannot be and become ourselves without orienting ourselves towards others, without entering into a relationship with others.
That being said, the bottom line is that we are more alike than we are different. Yes, one person despises raw onions, the other orders an extra portion with his kebab. Some can count well, others can sing. Many hate change, some need it. Every person has something to tell that no other person could tell. But: As soon as the sun shines, most people flock outside. Almost all people are touched when they see a family of geese with chicks; no one wants to be lonely, do something wrong, hurt others or waste their own life.
We can only find ourselves and our happiness if we look at ourselves and do justice to our specialness. But that doesn’t mean that we have to ignore our fellow human beings and everything that connects us and what we share. Comparing ourselves with other people can certainly lead us astray and away from our path. But it can also help us and offer support and orientation. For example in the following situations.
3 situations in which comparing yourself to others can help
1. The world is conspiring against you
Are you the unluckiest person? Are you having a particularly difficult time in life? Is the world conspiring against you? At least the latter seems highly unlikely – even if it may sometimes feel that way.
If we find ourselves in a situation that we experience as unfair, difficult to cope with and absolutely terrible, it can help to realize that there are or were people who are or were worse off than we are. Not with a guilty conscience about our own feelings. We can be sad, quarrel or feel helpless when something bad happens to us and we are disappointed in our lives, no matter how bad and no matter how justified the disappointment is. But before we give ourselves over to the dark vortex of our personal misfortune and sink into it, it can make sense to look at others who have had to endure more. And endure (have).
2. You’re not doing enough
Many people have one or two high-flyers in their environment who, with their average achievements and their average life, make them look like a nice attempt. But these flyers are usually in the minority, they are the exception. Not a suitable benchmark. And often not even the reason we feel inadequate. This usually lies more in the demands we place on ourselves.
We typically expect more from ourselves than we expect from other people. We always want to be on time and smarter, do everything right, faster and better, and preferably always attract positive attention. But why? What kind of claims are these? If 90 percent of the people around us make mistakes, forget things, and occasionally fail to do something, why shouldn’t that be okay for us?
If we feel inadequate and inferior in what we do, it can help to look at and compare with all the people who do no more or less than us – and are still good enough.
3. Your life is sooooo boring
Nine to five job? Solid rental apartment in a quiet neighborhood for more than three years? Your leisure activities include meeting friends, sports, household chores and occasional travel, preferably to places you already know because you know you like it there and because your vacation days and your budget are limited? Incredibly boring – at least compared to the lives of various artists, stars, globetrotters and the like. Compared to the lives of the vast majority of our society, it is not boring – but normal. And why should that be wrong?
If most people are happy with a rather unspectacular life, it is at least within the realm of possibility that we could be too. Let’s look at other people: Would we presume to say that a conventional life is less valuable, great or fulfilling than an adventurous one? And if not, then why should we have a problem with living a conventional life – one in which we have everything we need most days? Everything that is good and right for most people is not always good and right for us. But if we believe that what is right for most people is wrong for us, it is at least interesting why we believe that – and whether this reason convinces us on closer inspection.