Let's Compare. Let's Complicate.

‘Who do you think is happier? Human beings or animals?’ asked my friend randomly.

I don’t know why he gets such strange doubts. The stranger part is, I don’t know why he thinks I have the answers for his insane questions. And the strangest part is, I have answers for most of such questions.

‘Of course! The animals,’ I replied.

‘Why do you think so?’ he asked.

‘They don’t compare. In fact, there is no room for comparison,’ I answered almost spontaneously.

I have not seen some hippos slim and some other fat hippos. Have you seen any short giraffe? What reason does a parrot have to compare itself with another parrot? Is there one parrot greener than the other?

No, it’s not just about physical appearance.

All dolphins are equally intelligent. I have not read about even one heron with a great patience catching a fish while another heron losing patience and missing its prey. Is there any elephant that keeps forgetting its way back to its herd?

When they are equally short, equally intelligent, equally green, equally patient, where comes the question of comparison?

But it doesn’t happen with us, the human beings. She is slimmer than me. He is sharper than me. My friend is 6-feet tall and I struggle to reach even the fifth shelf of a rack in the supermarket.

We compare our size – both vertically and horizontally. We compare the dimples on our cheeks and wrinkles on the foreheads. We curse that criminal melanin that plays with the complexion of our skin colour. We compare our intelligence, our memory power and what not!

Fine, we can console ourselves saying, ‘Our size, memory, complexion, intelligence – everything is given by nature, why should we compare and feel inferior?’

But, we do not stop our comparisons here. We continue our comparisons with others’ wealth, degrees, popularity, lifestyle and so on.

Did nature create all these differences?

This is exactly where animals get an upper edge. All zebras eat the same grass. All dolphins swim in the same waterbody. All pigs make the same love.

Zebras don’t pack and sell ‘premium’ grass. Dolphins created no classes among themselves to have a rich-class pond filled with mineral water and a lower-class lake with saltwater. It's we who complicated our lives creating classes and boundaries, and it's we who started comparing.

We were happy watching a 40-inch LCD TV in our home until our neighbours brought a 55-inch Smart TV in their house. Our son securing an engineering degree was a matter of pride for us until we got a call from one of our relatives sharing the news that their son got selected in a campus interview.

Our language taught us 'degrees of comparison'. Our Math introduced us to > and < symbols. Our Science told us that there is a SMALL intestine and a LARGE intestine in our own body. Comparisons are injected into our systems from very schooling days.

Is it a mistake of human beings to advance intellectually, develop civilizations, discover ways to live better, find ways to learn and teach for a comfortable living?

No, the mistake lies in not asking some questions to ourselves: What to compare? Whom to compare with? How to respond after comparing?

If you do not wish to contest in any beauty pageant or look for an opportunity in the movie field, why do you want to unnecessarily compare your de-shaped body with six-pack abs of a model?

If your neighbor purchases a gold necklace and town cries the news, and if you are sad for not having one, how does spreading negative news about their dishonest source of income help you? It may give a temporary relief, but the only thing that can help you is planning – saving – accumulating money and buying a similar necklace. If it is beyond our reach, why compare?

If the girl in your neighborhood scores more marks than my child, how does comparing, scolding, insulting, punishing your child help? If your child’s school adds more marks to your child’s progress report for every scolding you shout and every punishment you give, your approach makes sense. But it doesn’t happen that way. All you need to do is to prepare your child to understand and reproduce the content better.

But remember, the noble comparison is all about comparing yourself with the people who have ignited the spark of comparison in you not with the help of what nature has given them, not with the help of what their parents or others have donated them, but with the help of what they have earned by themselves.

Going one step ahead, the nobler comparison is all about comparing your today-self with your past-self. Is your today's kindness more than your yesterday’s? Are you more knowledgeable now than you were last year? Have you become richer in the last one year? Have you added more marks to this year’s progress report than your last year’s one? Comparison with no one else, but yourself.

There is one more approach, and that’s the noblest one: no-comparison approach.

Osho says ‘Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior, but nobody is equal either. People are simply unique, incomparable. You are you, I am I.‘