This is The Nooner, a (very short) daily newsletter slash podcast that has its very own section within Dispatches from Inner Space.
To see the first post, which doubles as an explainer, click here.
Also a quick reminder that you can listen to the podcast version of each post wherever you listen to podcasts.
First of all, we can’t help it
Some of the deepest code in our DNA is about determining where we fit into our social hierarchies. So, NOT comparing ourselves to other people might be impossible.
Or, if it is possible, it’s only after long years of hard work and practice and failure. So in the meantime, failing our way toward that ideal goal, maybe there’s something we can do, a stopgap, a set of training wheels we can slap on to quit skinning our hands and knees on the stupid pavement of comparisons.
We all know how easy it is to look at someone and envy what they have, or what they’ve accomplished, or what (or who) they get to do. But if you also knew what that person has had to face, what they’ve lost, what they suffer, your heart might hesitate at the thought of a trade.
I think this is because we’re also experts at enduring our own flavors suffering. Our pain is familiar. We’ve grown into it, around it, above it. Being suddenly subjected to a whole new set of flavors would be pretty horrific.
So. Fair’s fair. If you’re going to compare yourself to someone, you have to compare it all. Successes and failures. Joys and sorrows. Pleasures and pains.
So maybe the best way to learn to stop comparing is to do it more. Go all the way. Finish the course. The only way out is through. And so on.
Like the kid who smokes a cigarette and then his dad makes him smoke the whole pack.
Is this really what you want?
Click at least one of these or else…
…no one will hear you scream about all the money you saved by switching to GEICO.
Compare yourself to other people more