Some time ago, I was standing in a bookshop, watching my eyes move along a shelf. So many books, so many names, some with conspicuous references to sales figures or recognition. I had not intended to compare myself with anyone, and yet within seconds it happened. Who gets read? Who reaches more people? Who seems further ahead? It was not an envious thought, nor even a particularly unpleasant one. More like an almost automatic inner movement that suddenly wanted to place me in relation to everyone else. That was what interested me. I had not consciously decided to compare. It was simply there. And as I carried on walking, I found myself wondering how often we judge our own worth, our progress or even our contentment only once someone else enters the same inner space.
Comparison is probably one of the most natural ways we orient ourselves. Even as children, we learn a great deal by observing what others can do, how they react and what is considered normal within a group. As adults, we still need points of reference. It is difficult to judge whether something is a lot or a little, fast or slow, unusual or ordinary, without placing it in some kind of context. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Comparison can inform us. It can show me what is possible, inspire me or help me assess my own situation more realistically. It becomes more difficult for me when orientation turns into a judgement about myself. Then the question is no longer simply, ‘Where is the other person?’ Suddenly it becomes: ‘What does their life say about mine?’
I know that shift very well. Someone achieves something I would also like to achieve, and for a brief moment my view of what I already have changes. An hour earlier, I may have been satisfied with my work. Then I see what someone else has created, and the same work suddenly seems smaller. Objectively, nothing about it has changed. Only the measure has changed. I still find that remarkable. Comparison can diminish something without the thing itself changing at all. The same happens in the other direction. If I meet someone whose circumstances are more difficult than mine, my own life can suddenly seem easier. Both movements show me how dependent our sense of enough or not enough can become on what we happen to be looking at.
This becomes especially clear to me with things that are difficult to measure. Success can still be expressed to some extent in numbers, although even there much remains open. But how do I compare contentment, inner calm, a relationship, personal development or my own path? And yet I try. The other person seems more at ease. She appears happier. He has his life more obviously under control. Someone seems more spiritually developed, more self-assured, freer or more at home in themselves. But I am only ever seeing a fragment. I know the visible surface of another person and compare it with my entire inner life. I know my own doubts, mistakes, fears and unspoken questions. Of the other person, I mainly see what reaches the outside world. For that reason alone, the comparison can hardly be fair.
For me, today’s media landscape intensifies this distortion. In the past, I mainly compared myself with people who were actually part of my life. Now, within a few minutes, I can see hundreds of glimpses into other people’s lives. Travel, bodies, homes, relationships, professional success, creative work and apparently extraordinary experiences appear side by side. What is easily lost in all this is ordinary life. Hardly anyone shows a completely unremarkable Tuesday when nothing works particularly well, the flat is untidy, their mood is mediocre and life feels neither deep nor especially inspiring. I do not blame anyone for that. We tend to show what we want to show. But if I forget that this is a selection, the many individual highlights of other people’s lives can quietly become a standard against which I measure my ordinary day.
What I find even more interesting is how quickly comparison becomes part of identity. I am no longer simply where I am. I am further ahead or less far ahead than someone else. More successful, less successful, more conscious, older, younger, more experienced, slower. My life suddenly acquires a ranking. Over time, though, I have come to understand how little such rankings often mean. People begin from entirely different circumstances. They carry different experiences, opportunities, responsibilities and inner histories with them. Two paths may look similar from the outside and mean something completely different within. If I focus only on a visible outcome, I can easily lose sight of the context of my own path.
This is where I recognise a connection with I – Your Best Liar. While writing the book, I kept returning to the way we turn observations into stories about ourselves. Another person does not have to do anything against me at all. It is enough for them to possess or achieve something that touches an old insecurity in me. Then the inner voice begins to speak: You are too late. You have achieved too little. Other people can do this better. You should be much further ahead by now. What fascinates me is that thoughts like these can sound like sober facts, even though they are often only interpretations. The comparison provides the trigger, and my thinking builds a judgement about myself from it.
I have learned that comparisons can also reveal something about my own longings. Envy or unease are not pleasant feelings, but sometimes they contain information. When another person’s life affects me particularly strongly, I am less interested now in whether I ought to be ashamed of that reaction. I ask instead what exactly is touching something in me. Is it really their success, or does it remind me of something I have postponed in my own life for a long time? Do I envy the journey, or the freedom I associate with it? The professional success, or the feeling of being seen for something of one’s own? In moments like these, comparison becomes less of a judgement about my worth and more of a clue to what within me is asking for attention.
And yet there comes a point where comparison loses its meaning. My life is not something I can win. There is no shared finishing line where we all stand side by side and someone decides who did it best. The older I get, the stranger that idea feels to me. I see people who have achieved things I once believed would automatically make them happy, and I recognise that every life carries its own mixture of fulfilment, loss, doubt and joy. Then I become aware of how strange it really is to keep judging my path by the visible sections of other people’s paths. When I notice my gaze drifting left and right again today, I sometimes think back to that bookshop. To all those spines standing beside one another on the shelf. Each carries a different title, a different story, a different number of pages. And none of those books becomes better by ceasing to be a different one.