Compare but Don’t Despair
Human brains are funny and fascinating. They have always been funny and fascinating. It’s amazing what they have done, how they keep going, and how they keep changing. Stay with me now, this little brain detour has a point.
Look around. Everything you see that isn’t nature was created by a brain. It’s truly fascinating.
But, at the same time, look at what we find interesting, boring, exciting, ridiculous, and everything else. Everyone has their own ideas about that and what it all means to them. Funny. Strange funny and haha funny.
The brain is a very complex (to say the least) structure. How did it even evolve?? How did it create itself?? It hurts my brain just thinking about it. There are two parts that I find myself thinking the most about. And they can’t function very well without the other.
One of them is the reason I can think about them at all — the prefrontal cortex (PFC).
The PFC has given us the ability to assess, plan, focus, decide, and evaluate what really is important, what really needs to be done, what really is going on around us. The other part is our primitive brain. It’s what keeps us surviving. It immediately responds to threats — the fight or flight part of our brain. Now, the PFC helps keep that primitive brain from taking over. However, our survival instinct is still intact (thankfully) and that signals the primitive brain to step up and protect us from the “threat”. And the PFC evaluates the threat level and allows us to proceed reasonably.
Okay, brain lesson over and on to my point.
Survival is crucial to survival (see, the brain is funny!). And in the past, comparing ourselves to others was how we survived. We have always been social creatures. In fact, way back in the beginning of time, that was how we survived. Being in a group meant survival. More protection. More sharing. More of everything. We are also creatures of comfort so we like what we know and understand and we accept what we know and understand. Likeness means survival. Groups mean working together and delegating tasks (conservation of individual energy), more people to watch out for danger (avoiding pain = death), more rewards from the combined hunting and gathering and all the basic needs (seeking pleasure). Our primitive brains still compare ourselves to others to evaluate likeness and we try to fit in with the larger group so we can be assured of acceptance and survival.
But, comparing ourselves to others is a survival tactic we do not need anymore. This became tricky when society took over and created rules based on one small population of people (for example, check out the history of BMI — check out why BMI is misleading). It told us that we had to look a certain way, act a certain way, have a specific job, be a mom, don’t be single, don’t speak out, and on and on, to be accepted. And even though we do still want to be accepted, our primitive brain doesn’t realize that survival doesn’t actually rely on that as much anymore. Now, comparing ourselves all the time separates us more and lessens the human experience.
Society tells us that if we don’t meet all of those societal criteria, we can’t be part of the group and we won’t be accepted. Our primitive brain doesn’t really know what’s going on in reality. All it knows is that it is thinking “I’m not accepted” and feeling rejection and then it kicks in because it thinks we are going to die alone. So we learn that we should do what everyone else is doing so that we can be happy. We should look like everyone else so we can be happy. We should never really let our own personalities stand out so we can be happy. But, we aren’t happy because we aren’t being ourselves. We aren’t looking at ourselves. We aren’t seeing the amazing ways we make the group better with all our differences. We aren’t living when we think we need to live like everyone else.
What if we stopped looking at others and seeing how we don’t measure up? What if we look at others, truly see them, and truly see ourselves and how we can be together and elevate each other? What if we see survival by wanting to use energy for growth, progress, and feeling everything?
What would happen if we stopped comparing and tried connecting with others instead? What if that is how we finally start to feel like we’re doing more than just surviving? What if that is when we realize we are actually living. Doesn’t that sound way better? I think so.
