Do you ever find yourself smugly telling yourself that you're better than someone you hardly know? Or, conversly, do you find yourself lusting after someone else's "better" life? Yeah, I do it all the time. The invention of facebook has made it frighteningly easy to develop a shallow idea of what someone else is up to and makes it dangerously easy to decide that you are better/worse than them. The worst part is, I am honestly a little glad when I find out someone who I was jealous of has some huge problem and that my life actually is better.
The funny thing is, half these people hardly know me, and they certainly don't realize we are competing. And for everyone whose life I envy, there are probably just as many envying mine. I mean, who wouldn't? Mine's awesome! But really, we have been born into a ridiculously competetive culture. Some of you might like it and find it motivating. I hate it. It starts as babies. "Is you're baby sitting yet? Does he sleep through the night? Mine does, has for awhile. I'm sure your's will catch up." Um, what? They're babies! Who the heck cares?
It only gets worse from there. School is terrible for this. They even grade us and give us a rating. It could not be easier to see who you're better than! And of course later we become aware of who's prettier than us and more popular. We may not have a rating, but we all know (and in some horrifying cases, groups of kids actually do set up a rating.)
Then after school we compete for jobs, then compete for raises, and compete for a hot spouse to take to the reunion and prove that we're "better." During any of this are we competing to be "happiest?" No, no we are not. We just want other people to THINK we are happy. How stupid is that? In what way does that matter at all?
I am trying very hard to break away from this but it's hard. I definitely find myself trying to impress people. I find myself embellishing the things that are going well and down playing any problems I have. I want people to be jealous of me but really, I'm just setting an untrue precedent as I'm sure many other people also do. And to be entirely honest, from time to time I do things that I probably wouldn't do just because it would be an impressive story to tell people later. Yeah, I'm that person.
I am also trying very hard to just plain be happy for people when they are happy. And that's not entirely a selfless act. If I could feel happiness or jealousy, why on earth would I choose jealousy? It's not an incredibly fun emotion. Isn't "desire the root of all suffering?" (Buddha)
So what is my point? I am not better than you. You are not better than me. We are equally valuable as human beings. Any happiness for either of us benefits everyone. Congratulations! You won! But so did I.
No comments:
Post a Comment