Comparison

Very soon I will be in a series of meetings where I will be tempted to all sorts of comparison, insecurity, pride, self-doubt, and attempts to prove myself among my peers and those who are higher up the food-chain than I am. As I've considered this over the past week or two, I've been giving a little more thought and prayer than usual to the underlying issues in my heart.

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged on a book called Sin, Pride, and Self Acceptance. A book that's doing so much good work in my soul, I'm re-re-reading it. As one might expect, the author (Terry Cooper) talks a good bit about this issue.

The essential problem in our insecurity as it plays out in comparing ourselves to others, as Cooper sees it, is an underlying, un-spoken, pre-supposition. Namely, that I should be better than other people. This is true whether our comparison comes up "positive" (i.e. we compare and find ourselves coming out favorably, thus feeding our pride) or if our comparison comes up "negative" (i.e. we find ourselves lacking in comparison to others).

Either way, the fundamental, fatal flaw is the internal standard that we have that we ought to be better than other people. If we didn't have that expectation, we would not be so elated when it turned out to be true or so deeply crushed when it turned out to be false.

Consider how differently we would interact with people if we entered into a social or work or academic situation where we simply assumed that I would be me and they will be them and each of us will bring different things to the table. That is, imagine how differently our lives would be if we would allow others to simply be real people and allow ourselves to simply be a real person: warts and all.

Apart from the supposition that I'm supposed to somehow be superior to others I'd be much more free to enjoy the gifts that they bring to a situation and be much more settled in my own skin. The whole comparison game is rendered moot. Imagine being free to not even bother to break out the scale of my gifts/experiences/winsomeness/charm/wisdom/leadership/whatever abilities v. yours!

That's what I'm hoping I can do during these meetings. I'll let you know how it goes.