FEATURE

The Treacherous Voice of Comparison

By Rev. Ellen Debenport, Senior Minister at Unity of Wimberley, TX

When Ted Ligety won the Olympic gold medal in the giant slalom last week, the man who came in one second behind him languished in fifth place.  Those in between? Fractions of a second. One second. Five men carving curves into the snow with their skis-it made my knees hurt to watch them-flew down a steep mountain in exactly the same amount of time, give or take a second.  If you had been standing at the finish line, you would have had no idea who won. It takes digital Swiss timing to tell the difference. ...

I've been watching the Olympics every night, and it never fails to amaze me how many ways humans have invented to compare themselves to each other.  Who looks best on the red carpet?  Who's going to the Super Bowl? Who's ahead in the political campaigns?  When one young figure skater jumped a double loop instead of a triple, Scott Hamilton called it "disastrous." The petite teenager finished in tears.  How many among us could manage a double loop? Who even knows the difference in an axel, salchow or lutz?

I watch the figure skaters and thank God no one is judging me on creativity, execution, artistry, and degree of difficulty.  Except that voice in my head. The Comparison Queen who notices the achievements of everyone else and assures me I am not going to win a medal.  Do you have that voice?  My informal, lifelong survey tells me everyone has the voice, some louder than others.

We could blame our DNA. Scoping out the competition and trying to best them helped us survive, whether we were hunting lions or attracting a mate.  We could blame advertising, which reinforces our fears of inadequacy. It has to pinpoint a problem in order to sell a solution.  We could blame growing up with spelling bees, math contests, brain bowls and of course, sports. We glorify athletic contests where we keep scores and stats and times to the hundredth of a second.  But no one had to manufacture competition when I was young. All I had to do was look around to see how others outshone me.  The thing is, I know now-and knew then-that I was smart and kinda pretty and had friends. But I'm afraid a part of me will always be in seventh grade, convinced that everyone is looking at me, and mortified just to be alive.

In his wonderful book, The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer describes this yammering internal voice as a crazy roommate. If a roommate sat next to you all the time or followed you around saying You're not good enough ... You shouldn't have said that ... You look awful today ... Those people are smarter, younger, better equipped for life than you are ... you would kick that roommate out! Or at least tune him out. You wouldn't take it seriously.

And that's what we can do with the critical voice of comparison. One of the most useful spiritual/psychological lessons I've learned is that I don't have to believe my own thoughts.  Really.  Just because I think it, doesn't make it true.  The very fact that you can identify the critical voice means it's not really you. It is separate from you.  YOU are the witness, the one who hears the voice, the one who knows the voice is mean and often inaccurate. The one who knows the voice is actually afraid for you and wants to protect you...the one who feels compassion for that suffering seventh-grader lurking within.

We are evolving consciously now. We can identify the survival instincts that no longer serve us. The work of our human lives is to recognize the divine in us and call it forth, to live from a higher awareness than we did in the cave.  I don't know whether living in higher consciousness will make us less competitive. I'm not against fun, but being heartbroken because a medal is silver and not gold seems, well, a waste of athletic prowess and youthful exuberance.

So here's to the nerds and the klutzes, the socially anxious and the obnoxious, the jocks and the cool kids, the aging Italian skier who lagged by 1.58 seconds, and anyone else carrying a label that sets him or her apart from acceptable. Each of them (us) is made in God's image.

The more we live and move and have our being within Spirit, the less our differences matter. Like the spokes of a bicycle wheel, we grow closer together as we near the Center. No contest.