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There can be some advantages to comparing one person to another, or yourself to someone else.
Comparison can be a form of self-examination, reflecting on how you may or may not exhibit qualities you admire or dislike in another. When not used with such deliberate intent, however, comparisons can become dangerous.
Comparing one person or oneself to another without subsequently using that observation or analysis to spur you to positive, proactive action is counterproductive. Not only does it cloud your perception and steer you off your own path, it drains your energy, as it’s not channeled anywhere or transformed into anything else.
Everyone on Earth is here for a purpose.
That purpose is unique and personal to each person. Each person is, therefore, perfectly suited for the role of fulfilling their purpose.
Their appearance, their skills and weaknesses, their fortune and fate are all perfectly crafted and aligned for their purpose. No one else could do what they do better than them; by the same token, no one else can do what you do better than you.
One person’s purpose is no better than another’s; your purpose is not more or less worthy than mine. All of our purposes are necessary for the evolution and manifestation of All That Is, of which we are all an inseparable part.
Moreover our purposes change across lifetimes, and sometimes even within a single incarnation. That means that someone else’s purpose today might be yours in the next life or tomorrow or have been yours in a previous life or just yesterday. When seen in this light, it comes clear that comparisons need not provoke judgment but, rather, foster empathy and compassion. Because either we know how it is for each and every other person or we will.
Even the most awakened among us can fall prey to unhelpful, unproductive, unenlightened comparisons.
Old souls often judge new souls like some “grown-ups” judge children—as though they were never in those shoes once themselves. Whether it’s due to a comparison in spiritual development or life experience, cynicism, disdain, resentment, impatience, frustration all count among the same harmful negative energies we’re actively working so hard to expel and transform. When we compare without following it up with proactive action or we compare excessively, unnecessarily or unjustly, we only create more negative energy to, then, expel or transform.
Sometimes comparisons are unavoidable, as they confront us from external sources whether we evoke or actively participate in them or not. For example, disparities in treatment due to race, religion, ethnicity, economic status, gender or sexuality are all comparisons we may need to face from time to time (or all the time) whether we want to or not. In such cases, though it may be small consolation, it can help to remember that you can’t change another person; you can only change yourself. The outside force may be out of your control, but how respond to that inside you is in your power alone.
Author: Sage Kalmus
