Do you ever feel like you should be keeping up like everyone else? Like you're in a race, and everyone, or at least most of your peers, are accelerating, while your progress feels weaker or slower? If you've ever had these thoughts growing up, whether it was about studying, working, or something else like reading or exercising, where you look at those things in your life by comparing your progress to someone else's who is (in your opinion) doing better than you, then let me tell you how I got through it.
When I was a senior in high school, when everything around us was rushing us to do better in school, to score higher marks, to prepare for exams and interviews, I used to look around at people in my class, in my circle, and believe deep down that these people are doing 10 times better than what I'm doing. I was intensely convinced of that, that even my subconscious mind started to drive me away from having the confidence to do things that those people were doing. “Maybe they are gifted”, I thought to myself, “maybe I'm just not as smart as they are”.
This was how I looked at myself during that period of my life. Today, I am a second-year medical student at one of the best medical colleges in Saudi. I broke out of that period of self- comparison, perhaps a bit late, but eventually, I had to break it, so it doesn't break me one day. I started taking a closer look at my life, and also at the people whom I thought were “perfect” or ”smarter and better than me”. I started to open my eyes to some very important facts that I was ignoring in the midst of all that self-loathing and self-comparison.
I realized that in spite of everything that tried to break me in life, all the things I had to go through growing up, from my parents separating when I was at a young age, to struggling financially, to helping my siblings at school. All of those things did not break me, maybe they slowed me down a little, but I'm still where I should be. I still got good grades, if not excellent, they were above average. After I looked at my life, on the other hand, I looked at those people whom I compared myself to. Only to wake up to the fact that we were not living the same lives, they have different circumstances, different environments, and different people in their lives. They are also going through a race, just like me, but they're going through a different one. I may be good at things in life, while they may be bad at them, and vice versa.
Comparing your life to someone else's life is like comparing the sun to the moon, it is not a fair deal, because they both shine, just at different times of the day. I don't mean you should make excuses for yourself, but what you'll get out of realizing this truth, will give you peace. Peace that you're not racing anyone, you're on your own journey, and they are on a different one.
After I started to remind myself of that every now and then, forgiving myself for the breaks, the slow progress, and the pitfalls, I stopped focusing on trying to catch up to those people around me. Instead, I thought to myself “Okay, how can I make MY journey better?'' Upon this mindset, I progressed in my own rhythm, I scored higher and higher at school, and yes, some days I fall behind, but I remind myself again of this mindset, and I get back on my feet. I finally became at
peace with myself, and so can you. And listen, you may think that you and some “perfect” person have the same journey, or a really similar one. Yes, you said it, it's only “similar”. Each person in this life has a special journey, maybe it's similar to someone else, and maybe you would start to compare your journey to theirs, but they're not as similar as you think they are. In the end, we only know so little about someone's life
كتابة : امل صيقل تحرير : جنى بخاري تصميم : اسراء متولي