Good morning y'all! Let's talk about comparison.
I figured that some people may still be wondering what these posts are going to look like and where I want them to go. This topic felt like a good way to answer those questions, because a lot of the idea for this came from comparison.
Comparison is defined as "the act or instance of comparing", which is fine when you're comparing the safety aspects of a car. But why do we compare ourselves so much to other people? And why do we start to do it so young?
One of the biggest seasons of growth in our lives is in middle school, and I think that's probably a lot of why it sucks so much. You're starting to understand that there are people who don't like you and you can't fix it on the playground, there are changes happening that none of us are every really ready for, and it's all just weird. I also think that social media started playing a bigger role in our daily lives during these years, and it created even more anxiety about what people might think about you. We started comparing ourselves to what others were uploading online and for me personally that's when my era of self-hate started.
It takes a long time and a strong sense of self to come out of that insta-stalking-hole and routine of deep diving through peoples old posts in an effort to find one where they aren't as put together as they are now. We want so badly to be able to relate to celebrities and influencers, but it's literally part of their brand that we can't do this. They wouldn't be able to sell the products they do if we felt like they were just a person. When you see someone famous promoting a brand, don't you think that the reason people are so keen to go and buy it is because they think it'll make them more like the person promoting it? People with brand deals for certain teeth whitening companies probably had a professional treatment done years ago, and it isn't all to do with those whitening strips. So why do we keep comparing ourselves to them?
I compare myself a lot to others before, during, and after pageants. I don't think I do it so much because I am worried what they'll be thinking of me, but I worry that I didn't make people as proud as I could have. Like "maybe if I smiled like her I'd be better" or "If my legs were as long as hers I'd probably have a better walk". What's really different about my comparisons from middle school to now, is that I have found more of my self worth in the thoughts that come right after my comparisons. Instead of dwelling on things I know are different between me and another girl, I embrace the differences. "I may not smile like her, but my smile is massive and I love it", or "my legs may not ever grace the NYFW runway, but dang have I worked hard for these quads". I have found as I've grown up that my second thoughts have always been more telling of me as a person than my first ones. We have grown up in a culture where we are hyper-judgmental of ourselves and others, and we have these judgmental thoughts engrained in us. And in those thoughts we're also comparing. We judge others a lot of times based on jealousy, and jealousy comes from comparison. See where I'm going with this? My small group of 7th graders and I have been talking about this a lot lately. It's really hard to be self aware of how our thoughts relate to our actions and words that we use about or against other people, but they're grasping the concepts really well. We are working on how loving ourselves directly translates to how well we love others. Things have to start within, because people notice what we give out to the world and how honest it is.
The real me wakes up with messy hair and bad breath and a lot of times I'm pretty grumpy. And it probably takes me a good 30 minutes to actually get out of bed. So when people ask what time I wake up for my 8ams and I say "6ish", it's not because I'm insanely productive. It's because I literally need an extra hour. The real me says she's going to use her whitening strips for a week straight and then forgets after the second or third day. The real me does not have a consistent night-time routine yet because sometimes I get in bed after I workout and honestly? I don't get up for a while because I get distracted and then it's been 3 hours and I don't want to shower because it's so late and yea. You get the point. And yea I ran 100 miles last month and it was awesome, but the amount of times I have "completed" the reminder on my phone telling me to workout, without ever actually doing anything, is insane.
We cannot expect other humans to be perfect, because they aren't. It is in our nature to be imperfect. As someone that is a Christ follower I know that I am a sinner and this makes me really imperfect, and so are you. And so are the verified people you follow on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. We're all just human, and the only thing we can strive for is to be better than we were yesterday. Striving for perfection is a lost cause, because it will only make us sad. Comparing ourselves to others will only make us disappointed in our inability to be them. And when our comparisons go so far as to try to be those people, we are losing ourselves. How can we expect others to appreciate who we are if we don't even like the person we were born to be?
This is not to say that if you like a product that someone promotes you can't get it! We just can't expect to find another person's genetics in a waist trainer. Ya feel me?
I was looking up quotes about comparison to post on The Real Me Movement's instagram and I thought it was pretty funny that a lot of them were anonymous. Whether the authors have been lost over the years or the people that said it really did try to remain anonymous, we can't compare them to other big writers now. They're anonymous, we have nothing to associate them with, for all we know it could've been Shakespeare himself that said it. So we have nothing to say negatively about them. How funny is that?
I hope y'all enjoyed this post! It was kind of a long-winded way of saying "comparison is the thief of joy" (thank you Theodore Roosevelt), but if you know me you know how much I love to talk. One day I'll probably be able to say all of this more eloquently, but until then this is what you get!
