Why do we compare and despair?

Plus the power of dance

Hello, and thank you for reading The Honesty Box.

I hope this instalment is up to scratch, because as I write I’m lying in bed on Saturday night with the worst hangover I’ve had in years. On Friday, the co-working place I belong to held its first anniversary party - and I went a little overboard. It was amazing to dance with newly-made friends, brought together by the community-focused founders of Good Space, a place that I’ll always remember for bringing me back to life post-lockdown.

On with this Sunday’s topic: comparisons.

One day in lockdown with my mum, we had a chat about comparisons. She’d been listening to a radio phone-in and people had been ringing in with the awful stuff that’d been happening to them. Homes flooded, elderly parents isolated and unwell with the virus, people dying alone in hospital. How could we worry about our own stuff when other people had it so much worse?

When we’re feeling down for whatever reason, and then we hear of people having a worse time than us, we feel guilty for worrying about our own bad luck. There are a lot of sentences that go through our minds starting with ‘At least I don’t have…,’ or ‘It could be worse.’ Essentially, we compare ourselves to those worse off and then feel guilty. Not only do we feel bad for whatever is going on for us, we then add in guilt, and on it goes.

Don’t wang on about a problem that isn’t really a problem.

On the flipside, lots of people ‘compare and despair’ the other way. We see others who we think have better lives than we do: more money, more love, more parties, and we feel jealous and resentful. In reality, it might be that actually, they’re not really having a great time, despite their Instagram lives to the contrary. Or it might be that they regret who they got married to, the area they live in or they don’t like the job they do, but our perception is that they have fuller, richer lives than us in some way.

Writer and academic Brené Brown talks about a societal trend towards lack. Instead of being happy when other people achieve something, instead we sometimes feel lacking in our own lives. The question I discussed with mum was: what do we do about it? How do you stop your mind flipping from guilt to envy and back again? We decided it’s about noticing the comparisons and the feelings of guilt, lack, or whatever is going on, and letting yourself feel those emotions but not dwelling on them. It’s better not to squash feelings as they often pop up at other times, expressed as anger or resentment.

At the same time, don’t wang on about a problem that isn’t really a problem. I remember hearing from a friend whose dad was very unwell, and she’d just had dinner with an acquaintance who spent a fair amount of time expressing her worries about what tiles to choose for their new kitchen. This is where laughing at yourself might be a good idea, tile lady!

Things I like

Dance, dance, dance

I love to dance and was blown away by an article in the New York Times Magazine, Dancing Through New York in a Summer of Joy and Grief, by Carina del Valle Schorske. “The dancefloor is a chaos of connections, made & missed,” she writes in a tweet about her piece, which chronicles a summer spent dancing salsa and explores how people just want to move their bodies during times of distress. I’m going to a salsa bar this week and can’t wait for the feeling of joy I get when the music and my movement seem to flow.

Netflix binge

I’m addicted to Money Heist, the tale of a hold-up inside Spain’s Royal Mint. I’m late to the party, as it launched four years ago and became one of Netflix’s most-watched foreign-language series, but for some fun and big-budget escapism, it’s awesome.