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When You Compare, You Disappear

Peter Oswald was cool. I met him when we were both six and a half, on the first day of elementary school, and we stayed together for the next six years. He wasn’t one of my true muckers, like Stevie, Miles, Mike, and Tim were. He didn’t come by my house for mammoth Space Invader sessions, didn’t play on sports teams with us. And yet I always honored him with a deep respect. I might even have been a little intimidated by him.

It was his little acts of rebellion that first drew me to him. While I was busy trying to make myself invisible at school, he would deliberately commit small infractions to wind up the prefects. His favorite microrebellion was to stand with a microbend in his legs at assembly. We were all supposed to stand at attention, legs straight, back straight, arms behind the back. Peter’s back would be ramrod straight, his arms perfectly clasped behind him, but his knees would display this small but perceptible kink in them. Each morning the prefects would walk the rows, stop at Peter, and ask him to straighten his knees. Whereupon he would straighten them ever so slightly, but not completely. The prefects would ask him again. An infinitesimal straightening from Peter.

He said nothing during these encounters. Just stared dead ahead, and almost but not quite obeyed their instructions. Even when one prefect called the others over to assess the relative straightness of Peter’s legs, still he said nothing. A group of thirteen-year-old giants staring down at this little boy, sure that they were being played, but not sure how to define his crime or what to do about it.

He was over in team Sarnsfield, so I could never hear what they were all saying, but I could see the tableau of mini-oppression and resistance, and I was in awe. While I was shuddering at the thought that any prefect would even notice my existence, Peter was deliberately drawing their attention and ire. He was making himself a target, and showing the rest of us what was possible.

He was Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. Simply the coolest. (Go watch it.)

When we were eleven, I found myself in the same English class as Peter. We were just beginning to be introduced to the idea that studying English required not only reading, but also writing. Actual essays. Composition, words and phrases, structure, all of our own making. We were unwilling students of this new skill. With each new writing assignment, we’d whine, “How long does it have to be? Is this a one-paragraph paper, or a three-para?” (Or, god forbid, a fiver?) We thought of writing like a cross-country run in drizzle: the shorter the better.

Except Peter. I found him one afternoon scribbling away at his desk.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Writing.”

“What are you writing? Do we have an essay due?”

“Don’t know. I’m not writing an essay. I’m writing a story.”

“What sort of story?”

“A war story.”

“Soldiers and tanks and guns and bullets? That kind of story?”

“Yes.”

“How long is it?”

“Seventeen pages.”

Seventeen pages! I thought. Whoa! No one writes anything more than five paragraphs! What’s with seventeen pages? He was writing in blue ballpoint pen on regular lined paper. He was halfway down his current sheet, and underneath I could see a stack of pages all covered with his blue, rounded handwriting.

“Can I read it?” I asked.

He kept the sheet he was writing on and handed over the other pages. I started reading. And couldn’t stop. This eleven-year-old kid had created a cast of characters—I could see them all, hear their voices, feel their fear—and then put them into scenarios and challenges that I could visualize so clearly. Those seventeen pages sucked me right in.

“Wow,” I said. “What’s going to happen next? Are you going to keep writing? How’s it going to end? Do they all die?”

“Come back tomorrow,” he said.

I went home that night transformed. Writing was not something to be avoided. Writing was cool. Writing could be filled with character and story and was exciting and scary and could go on and on and on for seventeen pages. Or more.

If cool-man Peter could do that, then why not me? It didn’t look that hard. He wasn’t studying. He was just sitting there at his desk with his pen and his paper and pulling all these people and scenes and words right out of his head.

I sat down to write. Page after page flowed out of me. Lots and lots of words, actual writing that filled up so much space. My mom came in and asked me what I was doing. “Writing,” I replied. She smiled. I glowed. Turned back to my paper, wrote more words, and filled up more pages than I’d ever filled up before. Getting tired, I signed off my last page with “ … to be continued,” like I’d seen Peter do, and went to bed.

The next day I woke early and cycled off to school so that, before the assembly bell, I could read everything I’d written the night before.

I tried to lose myself in the story. Tried to be impressed. But I couldn’t even begin to convince myself that I’d written an actual story. In the cold light of day I simply didn’t believe anything I’d written. The characters seemed fake—I mean, of course they seemed fake; I’d just made them up. The challenges I’d placed them in were boring, or obvious, or anyway not real, since I’d just made them up as well. I managed to get through all eight pages, but when I was done I felt no desire to read on. Didn’t want to ask the author what was going to happen next. Didn’t care.

I was so sad and disappointed. And confused. Peter had done it. Why couldn’t I? What did he know that I didn’t? I went off to ask him.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I just see these characters in my head and know how they should be with each other. Then I write it down. Why don’t you keep at it? I’ll read your stuff if you like.”

I did keep at it, I think because filling up the pages gave me a feeling of power and accomplishment. But the stories never got any better. They remained—to my mind and, though he was sweet about it, to Peter’s—boring and fake. The words did not transport you into another world. Instead, they were heavy and clumsy, something the reader had to wade through to get to the end.

Even at that young age I knew I would never be able to do what Peter could. If this was what writers did, then I wasn’t one. I gave up writing for pleasure, and for the next twenty years carried around with me the caricature of myself that I was no writer because I was no Peter. This caricature was so pronounced that when I received a book contract to write my first book, the clause I was most concerned with was about money for a ghostwriter in the likely event that I couldn’t deliver a book worth reading.

What I should have realized is that though I am no Peter, it doesn’t mean I am no writer. It turns out that I am neither interested in making, nor very good at making, fiction. I find no characters popping into my head, and when I try to fabricate them, I get bored of them before I can even begin to describe them on paper. Fictional worlds and people are created by artists who believe passionately in the need for these worlds and people to come into existence. While I can appreciate such artists, I am not one of them.

Peter, God bless him, was a compelling exemplar of Peter. He was a rotten exemplar of me. By not realizing this, by confusing admiration with association, by aspiring to become him, I took myself down singularly unhappy and unproductive paths. I should have stayed on my true path.

(By the way, in preparation for writing this book, since we’d long ago lost touch, I looked up Peter Oswald. It turns out that he became a poet and a playwright. He was the first artist in residence at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. Although he has created many lauded pieces, he is best known for his war plays.)

To help you see yourself for the unique creature you are, begin by resisting the pull of comparison. This is easy to write, and so very hard to do. Our entire systems of parenting, of schooling, of social media, and of working have been designed to force you to compare all aspects of you with your peers.

Your parents were given charts to compare your height, weight, crawling, pooping, walking, eating, sleeping, socializing, first word, first sentence against standardized norms. From the moment you are conceived to the moment you become an adult, your parents are primed to measure their own success by which percentile you fall into.

Your school doubles down on this fetish for comparison. The grades you’re given throughout your education are derived by comparing your work against school, state, or national norms, and then pinpointing where you fall in this normative distribution. These norms locate you and define you. And, of course, determine which opportunities will be given to you, and which will not.

At work, this comparison fetish becomes an obsession. How much money you earn, whether you will get promoted, whether you will get laid off, all of these will be determined by your performance rating. And this rating is determined by your organization comparing you against everyone else. If you are perceived to be better than everyone else, you will be given a 5. If you’re more middle-of-the-pack, you’ll get a 3.

Some organizations derive these ratings by comparing each person’s performance and potential. Some go further and define lists of skills that each person is supposed to possess—these are called competencies—and then rate you on how much of each skill you appear to possess, as compared with your peers.

Some, fearing that too many workers will be given high ratings, demand that only a certain percentage be given 5s and 4s, and that the rest receive 3s or lower. This is called forcing the curve. It means that, even if you compare favorably with your peers, you may still wind up with a low rating.

These systems of comparison serve the organization—grades help schools determine their ranking, and therefore their funding; ratings help companies hand out different levels of merit and bonus pay.

None of them serve you. Instead, by comparing you with others, they render you invisible. They use standardized criteria as the measure of you. Which is how they hide you. From yourself, and from everyone else.

Just Heavenly

Of course, there are times when the pressure to compare comes not from you, nor from your parents or boss, but instead from your friends. From folks who look at you, compare their life choices with yours, and, because they feel the comparison doesn’t portray them favorably, denigrate you and your journey. These kinds of comparisons are the worst. They cut through your defenses the fastest, and are then the hardest to shake. The judgy judgments of “allies.”

Here’s an example from Myshel’s journal, as she tries to make sense of her friends’ reaction to her juggling of work and family.

___________

___________

Clearly, this is a specific form of comparison: one woman being pressured by other women who are comparing their life choices with hers, and judging her in the process.

Brian found love in his job. So did she. Brian got to play these loves out without having to fight against the “joking” condemnation of others. Instead, they would ask him about his work, what he was excited about, what his goals were, and he got to describe and revel in his loves. His audience affirmed and amplified his loves. He got bigger in their eyes.

Whatever the opposite of support is, that’s what Myshel got. And not from enemies, from folks trying to do her wrong, but from her closest confidantes. And so she, like so many women in the workplace, didn’t get to amplify her loves. She got to apologize for them instead.

Obviously, I don’t have a solution to all of the comparisons that’ll force themselves into your field of vision and distort how you come to see yourself. What I can offer you is this:

First, no matter how penetrating the stares or how caustic the judgments of others, hold on tight to your own red threads. They are yours. Other people may tell you who they think you should be, but you know, better than anyone, what your loves are and how they make you feel. There is truth and power in these red threads. Weave them ever more tightly into the fabric of your life, show others how you are using them to make a contribution, and over time you may find that the fabric you’ve woven is strong enough both to hold you and to block them out.

Second, be careful whom you choose to surround yourself with. Take seriously the truth that those closest to you do indeed reach in and touch you. It’s inhuman to pretend that they don’t. Do the people closest to you truly want you to flourish? Do they genuinely want to support you in turning all you love into all you could contribute? If they don’t, then you do not have a good relationship with them. And sometimes the best way to fix a bad relationship is to get out of it.

Third, if you feel a need to compare yourself with others, keep your eyes focused always and only on contribution. On the outcome of your efforts. Never compare your methods with theirs. If you are working with a colleague who seems able to turn customers’ frustration around, then yes, admire this outcome. If a teammate excels at crafting presentations that get her the funding she seeks, then yes, acknowledge the value of this outcome—and even, if you so desire, aspire to it.

But try to resist the temptation to copy or compare yourself with others’ methods. Their way is not your way, and never will be. Other people’s methods are a mystery to you, as yours are to them.

The best way forward for you is to admire the contribution of others and then figure out your most instinctive and authentic way of achieving that same outcome. Don’t compare your way of selling, serving, writing, presenting, or leading with others’, because you will lose yourself in the comparison. Instead, seek your path of least resistance to that same outcome.

What is a Pollock to a Matisse to an O’Keefe, or a Chris Rock to a Jerry Seinfeld to an Amy Schumer, or a Cardi B to a Beyoncé to an Ed Sheeran, or a Nelson Mandela to a Barack Obama to a Malala Yousafzai? Each represents a different route on a similar journey. So, yes, admire the painter for how they open up your world. Admire the comedian for how they make you laugh. Admire the singer for how they move you. Admire the Nobel Peace Prize winner for their impact on the world. But to compare how they did it, and to expect that each mimic the others—well, it’s a fool’s game, isn’t it.

Finally, remember the massive extent of your uniqueness. Five thousand Milky Ways. No one compares with you, and no one ever will. Your pattern of connections, insights, instincts, loves, and loathes is unmatched and unmatchable.

This doesn’t make you better than anyone else. It just makes any comparison of you with anyone else a failure of imagination.