In July 2020 I completed a 12-week fitness program Body Boss. At the end of long workdays in lockdown, I felt like a beast that spent too much time in the cage, ready to jump out and kill someone. Or, to channel the killing energy in a more socially appropriate way, to do some good full-body workout.
At the beginning of this training, there was a timed benchmark session. I did it in 6 minutes and 32 seconds. I was cursing, huffing, and puffing. It was brutal.
At the end of the program, I completed the same benchmark session in 4 minutes and 40 seconds.
I was proud of my improvement and felt really good about myself until I saw that some bitch posted in the comments that she completed a benchmark training in 3 minutes and 40ish seconds. A full freaking minute faster than me. Whaaaaat?
My hard-earned joy melted away and I became jealous of this blonde, size -1, awful girl, shamelessly bragging about her fitness achievements.
The very next day, as it often happens, a similar situation happened.
I was on the call with some collaborators and we were both working on conference papers, racing against the clock to hit the deadline which was in 5 days.
A collaborator asked me to review his paper and showed me a little bit of what he wrote as an introduction. I said: ‘You don’t need to show me that. Show me your graphs. Tell me the story through your graphs. That’s the fastest way.”
As it turned out, my collaborator had exactly zero graphs 5 days before the deadline. Zilch. Nada. He said he did not get to that part yet and that he’ll get back to me when he has graphs.
(If you ever created any kind of technical publication, you know that unless you have graphs you don’t have the paper. So my collaborator has only scratched the surface.)
On the other hand, I had ALL OF MY GRAPHS polished and good to go. I was moving things around, adding references, writing, rewriting, strengthening my discussion, and so on. I was in a much better place than he was and it felt awesome. I was obviously killing it.
These two stories illustrate the pleasures and perils of life on Earth. We are social beings, we observe each other and evaluate each other. We compare ourselves to one another. We don’t know the absolute value of anything until we can compare it to something else. These comparisons are tricky, though.
I felt great about my fitness time until I saw that someone else has done the workout much faster.
I felt like a mess while writing my paper until I learned that my peer did not even get half as far as I did.
And the entire time, it was just me, in my own bubble, doing the best I can in both arenas.
The theme of comparison brings up the question of its meaning (or meaninglessness). Often, our comparisons are done out of the context.
Should I compare myself to a random blonde girl from the Internet? Probably not. I don’t know anything about her. Who was she? How old was she? What was her level of training prior? How do I even know that the time she reported was true? (Not everything you read online is true… shocking, I know.) The entire context of this girl’s life remains blurred and boiled down into a single measurement: 3 minutes, 40ish seconds.
Similarly, the collaborator I was comparing myself to was much younger and less experienced than me. We worked on different projects under different circumstances. This time, I made faster progress. Maybe next time he will.
Perhaps the only meaningful comparison I can make is that between my former self and my current self. I lowered my own time on benchmark training and I can be certain that I made progress. I wrote a good paper and was able to wrap it up timely. That’s progress as well. I should be happy and at peace, not inferior or superior depending on how the comparison with other random person goes.
Yet, we love comparisons. We do them subconsciously. We do them fast, without even noticing while scrolling social media.
(Hence yours truly quit Instagram right about the time when the above-mentioned paper was due.)
Comparisons make us tired, weary, feeling less-then. In the past, we were comparing ourselves to the people from our village. Today, thanks to the Internet, we are comparing ourselves to the filtered lives of the entire humanity. No wonder we’re anxious and miserable.
I thought that once I get Ph.D., I will achieve a pinnacle of success and I will stop comparing myself to others. That was a whole another trap. Now I can compare myself to other Ph.D. and we have so many metrics to base that comparison off of: number of papers, citations, h-index, you name it. Not only did my Ph.D. not eradicate the comparison, but it also raised the comparison game to a whole another level and added fancy scientific metrics.
For comparison sake, we have to understand that we all have different genetic makeup, innate tendencies, traumas, karma, circumstances, conditioning, good days, bad days, pet peeves, and shit that’s haunting us when we finally crawl to the couch at the end of the day with a platter of cookies. We are all unique, messy, and completely different, hence every comparison is utterly meaningless.
Even the above-mentioned comparison between my former and present self may be problematic because I change all the time and so does the world. I can’t step into the same river twice, because both river and I are constantly changing, as Heraclitus pointed out.
Now, I wish I can tell you that you can give a middle finger to everyone and everything and live your entire life in a safe bubble, without the nasty habit of comparison. But it’s not that simple. We need each other. We need inspiration from each other. We need to piss each other off. We need to show each other what is possible by modeling it.
Diana Rose Harper told me an important truth:
“You can’t see your ass without a mirror.”
We need each other because we are each other’s mirrors.
What annoys me in you is probably something I should work on a bit. Even though I was annoyed by this girl that dared to post her (obviously fake) benchmark training time, maybe that’s because I really do not allow myself to brag online at all, and maybe I could or should do it a little bit. Maybe I was overly delighted by my own diligence compared to my colleague because I am such a fucking overprepared perfectionist and I should perhaps allow myself to do things in a sloppy way sometimes and write some really shitty papers that will get rejected.
When I get pissed by someone’s amazing success, it doesn’t have to indicate what an epic failure I am, it can show me what’s possible and what are all the cool things that people do. I can choose to dwell in misery and judgment or I can choose to be inspired, cheer others, and raise my own vibration.
I can learn how to make comparisons loosely, out of the place of curiosity, not competition. I can learn how to be entertained and informed, rather than crushed by comparisons. I can use mirrors that others are providing and I can hold the mirror to you. In which, hopefully, you’ll see that you are an amazing, remarkable person, that you are fighting a hard battle, and you’re doing an amazing job.
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