Times Of Swaziland: SELF-COMPARISON WILL BE DEATH OF US

SELF-COMPARISON WILL BE DEATH OF US
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Editor on 25/08/2022 08:13:00


Sir,
According to the social comparison theory, ‘we determine our social and
personal worth based of how we see ourselves stacked up against others we view
as either better or worse’. Throughout our lives we may have noticed that
self-comparison is inevitable, regardless of whether you’re the type of person
who consciously lives their life comparing it with the next person’s or not.
I’m sure we’ve all looked at the next person and thought, ‘wow, she’s so
much prettier and lighter than me’ and felt envious of that person’s looks.
Or we have thought, ‘he’s such a creepy guy’! And found ourselves
appreciating the way we behave or look, thankful we’re not that creepy guy
we’ve just passed by.
Victim
So yes, we’ve all been a victim to comparing ourselves against others. Like I
said earlier, it’s bound to happen but the least we can do is not give it the
power to break us. There are two types of social comparison; upward social
comparison and downward social comparison. Scholars say upward social comparison
is when we compare ourselves against someone we perceive as better than us and
the latter is when we compare ourselves against someone we perceive as worse
than us. This is not always detrimental to one’s health and peace of mind but
it certainly is, when we do it from a negative standpoint. When we look at a
‘drunkard’ and think, ‘well, I don’t want to be that guy. I don’t want
to be famous for being a drunkard like that lady’. We’re looking at it from
a place where we want to better ourselves and that is good for us, right? But
when we think, ‘all my friends and peers are succeeding in life yet nothing is
working out for me. They all drive pleasant cars and have got nice jobs but what
do I have; nothing to brag about.
Health
Nothing but the pain of having absolutely nothing to my name’. That’s when
it’s detrimental to our mental and physical health because we spend days,
weeks and sometimes months of sleepless nights thinking about how we’re
worthless and our lives aren’t worth living because we have nothing. So many
lives have been lost due to such thoughts. But it’s inevitable. Whether we
like it or not, we sometimes find ourselves in a situation where we look all
around us and see nothing but how everyone seems to have everything they need
yet we do not even have a quarter of the things they have or the accomplishments
they have achieved. We look all around us and see that we’re failures; how do
we deal with that? How do we deal with the lost feeling?
I say we do it the evidently hard way; we see perfection in imperfection. I say
don’t think about how worthless you are and start thinking about how you’re
your own person with your own path and the next person is their own person with
their own. Social media has made it so much harder for people living in this day
and age to view themselves in a positive image. Social media has successfully
made it hard for us to love ourselves and be at least somewhat content and happy
with our lives. We are focused on the number of likes another person gets that
we don’t; how they’re touring the world and having fun every day, that our
minds have no room to help us appreciate ourselves for who we are. We’ve seen
our kids, friends, siblings and ourselves fall into depression, self-hate and
poor self-esteem owing to how others appear on social media.
Suicide
We’ve lost some of our loved ones to suicide because they’ve browsed through
Facebook, saw what their peers were supposedly up to in life, marked themselves
worthless and consequently taken their lives. We’ve probably thought about it
ourselves. We’ve seen our parents think we’re not good enough after seeing
their colleagues post their kid, celebrating how they’ve made it to the next
grade with straight As. We’ve seen a lot of lives ruined by self-comparison.
It’s so sad how someone else’s victories can be the reason we lose faith in
ourselves; the reason we overlook our strengths and see solely our weaknesses;
the reason we feel we’re failures. It’s sad how it is inescapable and even
sadder how many a time we compare ourselves against others from a negative mind
frame.