Prologue
There is this whole new realm where people deliberately try to understand the meaning of comparison and whether it fuels competition or suffering. Two schools of thought clashing at their peaks, the former trying to glorify the notion of comparisons and the latter trying hard to vilify it. After all, it is a matter of seconds before you get into a rife of comparing yourself to everyone around you. It’s inevitable — the feeling of inducing pride by comparing yourself to other less competent people around you. Inevitable also is the feeling of despair and dread when you realize that the same comparison has led you to discover many others around you who have achieved way beyond what you can fathom, and in less time than what it could take you. This incongruity between the two schools of thought has blocked a way to clearly understand when you may compare yourself to others and when you, preferably, should not.
It’s 8:00 am and a chilly morning. Still lying on my bed I reach my phone on the side table before my eyes are fully open. A few seconds later my eyes are glued to a 5.5-inch screen full of content. I come across a photo of my friend hiking someplace in the northern part of the country I live in, I scroll through ignoring the heart button.
After much procrastination and a couple of minutes of deliberate tries, I realize it is time to face the reality and get out of my bed. Little do I plan about what I am going to do during the day and rush through my morning routine. Sitting at the coffee table, I look at the clock hanging high up on the front wall, but strangely I grab my phone and unlock it quickly pretending to check the time again. Funny, that my mind stops working when it doesn’t get an hourly glimpse at the 5.5-inch screen that I carry around. Soon after my morning coffee, it is time for me to travel to a place that now seems like the only safe option to think about.
Thinking about everything else alludes to a fear of missing out on something. Something that I have not discovered yet, something that could only be discovered by surrendering myself to the “oblivion” of time. It could be anything that everyone else is doing and seldom something that I am doing. That fear triggers a queue of thoughts that then fill my mind entirely while I travel to the place that gives me my routine in return for my traded time. Every passing minute now, until my morning travel ends, is about a serious analysis of what I could be missing out on today while trying to keep up with my routine. It is but a constant and painful state of analysing what I have done or what I am yet to do with everything that everyone could be doing.
I reach my place of pledge, a space for me to sit among other similar members of this society and slog the day away pretending that we create an impact and we belong here. I look around with my petty eyes and try to predict what everyone’s morning was like, what their net worth could be and how lucky they all are. Then I look at my screen again to see a new notification about someone getting a new job. However, I now need to push myself to work while leveraging every ounce of depleting inspiration left in me. Well, my mind is fatigued by all the complex analysis I did in the past hour, and only caffeine can now help me steer through the day. I sit and work as if this was my last day at this place, hoping for the day to end soon, so I can go back and lie on my bed, staring straight at my phone only to wake up the next morning and do it all again.
