Comparing

Comparing means as a rule that I deem something more beautiful or better than something else, more beautiful or better for me. Simply put, I prefer one thing over another and exclude something from my approval. But maybe the other thing hides a special beauty from me, all the more when I belittle it in comparison to something else and shut myself from it.  This is how I make myself poor, especially when I compare something I have with something I do not have.  My love then withdraws from what I have, what I have now.  I reject it in comparison to what I do not have. Then I am doubly poor, deprived of what I have and what I do not have.

But often the very thing I have is the special challenge, compared to what I do not have. I grow through it, often more than I would if I had what I would prefer to have.

Where do I have the greater freedom? do I have it in what I have, or in what I only have as something to compare? Where do I achieve more, and where do I achieve it more easily?

Still, we sometimes lose what we have, for instance, in a relationship. We have to leave it behind then and look for something else –but without comparing.  The other thing is simply over. Without comparing the past with the new, the former is permitted to come with me. It supports the new, remains there for me.
In this way we sometimes compare places and people, one kind of work to another, one joy to another, one gain or one loss, and through comparing we often lose both.

How do we avoid this restrictive comparing? We say yes to one and also to the other as it is, as it was, as it will be. In saying yes we experience ourselves fully. We experience ourselves as unique, and everyone and everything else as well."

Bert Hellinger