There is so much more that unites us than divides us if we are willing to shift our perspective and focus on the macro instead of the micro.
This morning I found myself scrolling through Instagram as I tend to do when I am waiting more than .008 seconds for something else to finish. I got caught up in that game we play on social media and perhaps in life…The Comparison Game.
I looked at every person who was posting content and immediately compared myself to them. I noted their number of followers, their physique, lifestyle and all the details we glean from looking at someone else’s carefully crafted content and then I looked at myself, in all the dark, insecure places and found myself lacking…how could I not? It will never be fair to make a comparison based on incomplete information…and here’s the thing…I’ll never have the same amount of info about someone else as I will about myself and that means that I will always be wrong in my comparison whether I ‘win’ or ‘lose’ the matchup.
So back to this morning when I was feeling insecure and sorry for myself, I realized that (as the saying goes) I was looking at it through a microscope instead of a telescope. So I zoomed out. Instead of looking at all the detail and thinking about what I didn’t have by comparison, I started seeing what was behind the end result in that post. The values that drive that person to pursue their passion and tell their story, the feelings they must have had to get where they are in the moment captured before me and the struggles they had to overcome. Suddenly, we are not so different. I have my own set of values, feelings and struggles and if you think in terms of comparing on the macro level we really all are the same. If you find differences, zoom out until you can’t find any more and start your comparison there…see if that changes your insecurity and isolation into connection and inspiration. The other side of comparison is tricky too, since our egos all love to feel better than someone at something.
Taking this principle from social media and into the world can give us empathy we didn’t knew we possessed. For example, if I look at someone living on the streets, I can feel great about myself and how accomplished I am and all the other ways that we are different because it scares me to think that we could be similar as I am unwilling to trade places with them. But if I zoom out and think about the times that I felt lost, didn’t have a place to go or know what to do next, then I can empathize a bit more. If I zoom out even further, we are both alive, breathing, human beings, in that regard we are exactly the same, now it isn’t about comparing to focus on how we measure up to each other, but about how we can connect with one another because at some level, aren’t we all the same?
So if we must compare ourselves to others, rather than to who we were yesterday, then let’s zoom out until we see what connects us rather than divides us.
Because we are all in this together.