We compare on a regular bases. Our brain is hard wired to think relatively, so comparison is natural and an essential neuro-activity. I am not against comparison as it’s impossible to stop doing it completely, but rather I am making a case for us to be more conscious about this process and the pain involved when we don’t, willingly or unwillingly.
To realize the dire importance of being conscious while activities related to comparisons are occurring in our brains, it requires a conscious comparison. So let’s just do some conscious comparisons together. Imagine there are two people and for the sake of it lets name them ‘Ram’ and ‘Shyam’.
Ram was born in some remote village in India to a rice farmer. Its 1500’s so no schools and no electricity, so out goes all the electronic gadgets we so much adore. But anyways, imagine Ram turned 30 today with four of his boys farming along with him, aging 13, 11, 8, and 4. The little one is obviously just goofing around giving them a hard time. Ram’s wife is as usual doing the house hold stuff along with her two daughters aging 10 and 7.
Shyam on the other hand is a chap from NYC an ideal youth of 21st century. Goggling and FB’ing every now and then. Being a bachelor, he flirts with young girls, given a chance, and is about to celebrate his 30th birthday in a club or a bar whatever suites his credit card that day. He is frequently bombarded with marketing advertisements, brain washing him to feel insecure, so as to continue consuming more, to gain some decent social image, which by the way is a must per the same advertising companies (LOL!!)
Apart from seasons with less rain, unexpected/unreasonable death of loved ones and occasional falling sick, Ram’s life is running pretty smooth especially in terms of comparisons as there isn’t much to compare. His world is too small. He knows a total of 1000 people in all, who exists and are living in this world. For him the earth is just 200 square KM wide. Thus Ram’s brain is comparing things far less than that of Shyam’s.
Shyam’s brain on the other hand is endlessly comparing the things he have, the places he has visited, his bank balance, with his friends, colleagues, relatives and sadly with millionaires and billionaires, thanks to MTV Cribs and other TV shows of such kind. Shyam is fond of reading Guinness book of world records too, making him feel quite in-Guinness about himself every time. The constants advertisements with picture perfect bodies, drinking world class alcohol, dancing in a beach with semi naked girls wandering around, keeps adding salt to his pain and all this kind of constantly reminds him of how unworthy he really is and how he must keep running in the imaginary rat race he is hypnotized to believe in.
And yes Shyam’s bag of knowledge has a lot more information in it than Ram, at least a thousand times more in term of scales. He knows that there ~200 countries with ~7 billion people living worldwide having all kinds of faith and beliefs, some of which are in direct conflict with each other. He knows about ‘Mark Zukerberg’, a guy his age but with a billion dollar in his bank. He knows about wars and genocides, about extreme income disparity among rich and poor, about diseases, about dirty politics, about abusing and brutal violation of human/animal rights but especially he knows about Audi R8 2012 and places like Hawaii and Switzerland, thanks to his CEO friend and that crazy couple he befriended with, on FB recently.
Poor Shyam is literary bombarded with comparisons all the time, as you can see and since he is unconscious about it, he has lost some of his precious sleep in return and sadly he is not satisfied from within, so much so, as in, every time he reads a word ‘satisfaction’ he tries to remember “what does it really means to be satisfied?” since it’s been quite a long time, he himself have been satisfied, and so he has lost touch with that feeling completely.
Moral of the story don’t be Shyam. And a request to try to be more conscious, whenever your brain starts to compares next time, this will set you free like literary over time, trust me.
Best of luck!!!
Golden Rule: The more the people you know or the more the knowledge you have or the more the wealth you possess etc. the more the comparison(unconscious), the more the stress, the more the dissatisfaction, the less the sleep and the more the pain.
To realize the dire importance of being conscious while activities related to comparisons are occurring in our brains, it requires a conscious comparison. So let’s just do some conscious comparisons together. Imagine there are two people and for the sake of it lets name them ‘Ram’ and ‘Shyam’.
Ram was born in some remote village in India to a rice farmer. Its 1500’s so no schools and no electricity, so out goes all the electronic gadgets we so much adore. But anyways, imagine Ram turned 30 today with four of his boys farming along with him, aging 13, 11, 8, and 4. The little one is obviously just goofing around giving them a hard time. Ram’s wife is as usual doing the house hold stuff along with her two daughters aging 10 and 7.
Shyam on the other hand is a chap from NYC an ideal youth of 21st century. Goggling and FB’ing every now and then. Being a bachelor, he flirts with young girls, given a chance, and is about to celebrate his 30th birthday in a club or a bar whatever suites his credit card that day. He is frequently bombarded with marketing advertisements, brain washing him to feel insecure, so as to continue consuming more, to gain some decent social image, which by the way is a must per the same advertising companies (LOL!!)
Apart from seasons with less rain, unexpected/unreasonable death of loved ones and occasional falling sick, Ram’s life is running pretty smooth especially in terms of comparisons as there isn’t much to compare. His world is too small. He knows a total of 1000 people in all, who exists and are living in this world. For him the earth is just 200 square KM wide. Thus Ram’s brain is comparing things far less than that of Shyam’s.
Shyam’s brain on the other hand is endlessly comparing the things he have, the places he has visited, his bank balance, with his friends, colleagues, relatives and sadly with millionaires and billionaires, thanks to MTV Cribs and other TV shows of such kind. Shyam is fond of reading Guinness book of world records too, making him feel quite in-Guinness about himself every time. The constants advertisements with picture perfect bodies, drinking world class alcohol, dancing in a beach with semi naked girls wandering around, keeps adding salt to his pain and all this kind of constantly reminds him of how unworthy he really is and how he must keep running in the imaginary rat race he is hypnotized to believe in.
And yes Shyam’s bag of knowledge has a lot more information in it than Ram, at least a thousand times more in term of scales. He knows that there ~200 countries with ~7 billion people living worldwide having all kinds of faith and beliefs, some of which are in direct conflict with each other. He knows about ‘Mark Zukerberg’, a guy his age but with a billion dollar in his bank. He knows about wars and genocides, about extreme income disparity among rich and poor, about diseases, about dirty politics, about abusing and brutal violation of human/animal rights but especially he knows about Audi R8 2012 and places like Hawaii and Switzerland, thanks to his CEO friend and that crazy couple he befriended with, on FB recently.
Poor Shyam is literary bombarded with comparisons all the time, as you can see and since he is unconscious about it, he has lost some of his precious sleep in return and sadly he is not satisfied from within, so much so, as in, every time he reads a word ‘satisfaction’ he tries to remember “what does it really means to be satisfied?” since it’s been quite a long time, he himself have been satisfied, and so he has lost touch with that feeling completely.
Moral of the story don’t be Shyam. And a request to try to be more conscious, whenever your brain starts to compares next time, this will set you free like literary over time, trust me.
Best of luck!!!
Golden Rule: The more the people you know or the more the knowledge you have or the more the wealth you possess etc. the more the comparison(unconscious), the more the stress, the more the dissatisfaction, the less the sleep and the more the pain.
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