Dawn of the Ugly Era of Comparisons

There is always that one town that needs The Powerpuff Girls to save the day. However, all we can see today is The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, where all the Billies are constantly being reminded that they are useless, they need someone to make their life decisions and that they are mentally weak and physically unstable. The age of Monster University has ended where all the monsters, however shabby, however different, were welcomed in by the community, where nobody was judged on the basis of their unique appearances.

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“Comparison is the best way to judge our progress but not with others, compare your yesterday with your today.” 

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The concept of “The Survival Of the Fittest”, which emerged in late Nineteenth Century, when Darwin’s theory of origin came to the scene, brought many conflicts to this world. Herbert Spencer first used the phrase, after reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, in his Principles of Biology (1864), in which he drew parallels between his own economic theories and Darwin's biological ones. This phrase, however, was interpreted differently by different people of different ages.

The idea stands at the verge of the cliff today, where it is about to plunge into the pool of ugly comparisons. For instance, if I have to survive as the fittest, I would not consider working on my own self, and rather will prefer comparing myself to others so that I might bring them down, thus proving myself right.

In today’s world, while scrolling down Instagram, all we can see is a vast race of competition. Monsters ready to gulp the monsters. The immensely increasing trend of food blogging in which all food bloggers are in a continuous race to make their blogs look up to the mark. Those who can’t afford to dine out on a regular basis are comparing their social and monetary status with the food bloggers thus insulting them to be dishonest. I have seen many food bloggers updating their Instagram stories, begging for their followers to stop all the negativity and hatred.

Regardless of whether it's via web-based networking media or throughout everyday life, it's anything but difficult to begin contrasting ourselves with others, particularly when we're feeling especially defenseless. “How can she easily adjust work and parenthood, while I'm scarcely keeping it together?”, “For what reason wouldn't I be able to look that great in a swimsuit on my marvelous excursion?”, “How might I find a stylish line of work that way?”, “See how immaculate her life is.” This propensity is best depicted by Pastor Steve Furtick, who once stated, "The reason we battle with frailty is that we contrast our in the background and every other person's feature reel."

Furthermore, that is the reality: We frequently don't get the opportunity to see the truth behind the facade of a cautiously curated Instagram or a cleaned individual brand. In the event that we did, we probably won't feel so desirous or mediocre.

While sitting in front of the vanity, on the day of the first visit of my in-laws to be, I was trembling not because I was excited, or nervous or panicked, but because of the agony that I felt when my own mother forbade my younger sister to appear in front of the guests. My mother believed that my in-laws-to-be might choose my younger sister in place of myself. How can a mother discriminate her very own daughters just on the basis of their complexions? Let alone the guests, it revealed to me that my mother also is a believer in the age of comparison.

I worked day and night to make my project outstanding, yet the teacher gave me lesser marks because he believed that another group made a better presentation than my group did. This left me shattered because every day, in every educational institute in Pakistan, students are being compared to the others instead of being appreciated for their uniqueness. Every teacher has his/her own technique and if someone tries something out of the box, that student is eliminated from the list of brilliance.

This issue, I believe needs to be put into the limelight. This world deserves so much better than what actually is happening right now. Our people need love, kindness, and a reminder that whoever they are, wherever they live, whatever they believe in, they should learn to own their identity, their body, their origin, and learn to love themselves. 

I believe that our judgments and harsh comments dim the spark of uniqueness in someone's heart every day, a spark which took too long to develop. A spark which took too long, and faced too much, got mature, needs no more than a split second to shatter once and for all. Humiliation is a sin and should be treated as pitiful as possible. It is quite funny that fat is judging fat for being fat, skinny is mocking another skinny for the same reason. I believe that humiliation and judgment are most common in those people who are insecure about themselves. Thus, they try to make others feel insecure too.

I believe that people think that if we are unhappy and have a certain weakness, why let others live confidently with that? Let's mock them and make them feel equally bad as we do, whereas, this is wrong and thus needs to be stopped. Only you and I can make a difference. Let's learn to love ourselves first, embrace our body, our face, and our complexions just like we cherish each and every color of the rainbow. We might like pink more but we never say that yellow is ugly. Every color has its own charm, similarly we all humans have our own auras, our unique beauty and beautiful hearts beating the same rhythm every day. 

“Never compare your behind the scenes with someone’s highlight reel, you have no idea how ugly their behind the scenes were.”