Don't Compare One With the Other
- ☆ Merely comparing is useless for life.
- Comparing self with others and getting depressed. 彩 - Inferiority Complex
- : Comparing self with others and feeling proud - Superiority complex
Daily comparing self with others and feeling ourselves as too small will lead us to the peak of jealousy and it will lead to the fault of always bossing others and manipulating them.
Many among us might not have seen a giraffe in real life. A few might have seen it in a zoo. But many have seen it on the T.V. on the Discovery Channel.
The giraffe thought one day, 'Why am I so tall? If I were short and small, I could hop and run like a rabbit.' And he felt sad about it.
Then there came a fox and asked the giraffe, 'Why are you so tall?' The giraffe replied, 'My worry is also about the same.' Then the fox jumped on to the top of an up-turned basket and started to speak.
'Man feeds the cow with grass, hay, etc. Why? Because it gives milk, because it will draw a cart, man feeds the horse with grain, etc: a dog watches and guards the house, so man feeds the dog with some food. Man does not worry or take care of any thing which is not useful to him in any way. But you neither give milk, nor draw a cart, nor do you even guard a house.'
'Hence during summer, even if there is no grass on the ground, only if you are tall, you can reach some leaves from trees and eat them. That is why God has created you so tall,' said the fox. Then only the giraffe understood that there is a reason for God creating it so tall.
This is a meaningful and beautiful story for each and every child who has nurtured the seeds of envy, jealousy, etc.
There is a specific purpose for every thing on this planet earth. Those who have understood the purpose and utility are living happily. Those who cannot understand struggle and suffer.
It is only the 'struggle' of their inability to understand the purpose, which creates in them the negative feelings of comparison, envy, jealousy, etc.
A beautiful rose has thorns just below the blossom. Why did God create it like this? It is only to protect the nice rose from the cattle. If there were no thorns, rose would have lost all its respect and glamour. So, there is no meaning in differentiating between the two.
Amongst the bamboo, some are used to carry corpses to the burial grounds; some are used to put up platforms for conducting meetings, etc. Only very few become flutes. So. if we say only bamboo which become flutes are the best ones, then that only means our thinking has not become mature enough.
Whatever we are, however we are, we have to remain what we are. We should not appear like someone else. How is it that even now there is a saying, 'What is born to a tiger cannot become a cat?'
The reason; the cat looks like a tiger. Only rats are the enemies for the cat.
Even cats do not fight with them face to face and kill them. Cats make the rats run, run and run and make them mentally weak out of fear and kill them finally. But the tiger is not like that. As such, here, the cat which compares itself with the tiger becomes a symbol of disgrace.
The tendency to compare oneself with another happens due to one's inferiority complex. Actually the thought that we are inferior by birth, causes us to compare ourselves with those who appear to be superior to us.
But problems will arise by comparing thus, 'I am not like him; he is not like me, etc.'
When Swathi Thirunal was king of Travancore, he was witnessing a drama. One man was acting the role of Lord Rama.
It so happened that the king had to arrive when the drama had progressed halfway. The man who was acting as Rama bowed to the king as he arrived. Immediately the king left the place. What was the reason for the king's anger?
The king said. 'The actor, who should have actually become Rama himself on the stage, thought that he was only an actor and bowed to me. By this he has insulted Rama himself.' The king's sense of deep devotion to Lord Rama did not allow him to see the actor merely as an actor.
Such troubles start arising when we expect the noble qualities of great men in normal average people. The true respect the actor had for the king was not understood by the king. The reason: the quality of comparing. It will be only a problem if great seers are compared with ordinary men. We should learn to accept people as they are, with all their merits as well as de-merits. It is wrong to compare one with the other and look upon someone as lowly.
By comparing, one more problem may also arise.
Somewhere in a desert, a passer-by knocked at the door of a tent. The owner of the tent received him inside, and cooked and served him some food.
Before he started to eat the food, the tent owner told him. 'Oh guest, first of all thank God and then begin to eat.' But the guest said, 'I have so far never mentioned the name of God. If you want, I will say my thanks to you. '
But the tent owner insisted that the guest should and must say his thanks to God and then only, eat. The guest left the place without eating.
That night God appeared in the dream of the tent owner and said, 'I have been feeding him, as my child so far even though he has not mentioned my name even once. Just because he did not thank me before you for a single day, have you sent him away with hunger?' On hearing this, the tent owner felt sad.
This happened simply because the tent owner had compared himself with religious and pious people and set for himself a wrong image. The very process of our trying to judge people as good or bad depends solely on the scales of comparison we have set in ourselves as to which is right and which is wrong.
What is right and what is wrong is applicable only to you. The trouble starts when you start assessing and judging people, measuring them with your scale which is applicable only to you.
We get depressed due to these comparisons and we make others become depressed as well.
Put a big stop to your getting depressed through comparing yourself with others. From now on, start seeing the achievements and fulfillments of others as motivating factors for yourself.
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