Paul lately has been quoting this thing that he heard someone say (I'm sure he knows who said it, but I've forgotten) about comparison. "Comparison," this person said, "is the worst form of violence...toward yourself."
I love this quote. He only had to get to the "violence" part when he first recounted it, and I knew how it was going to end. (Because it is, isn't it, it's a little act of violence, to compare oneself to others?) It's just a little tiny knife that we can drive into ourselves, sometimes (oh god, I hope this isn't just me) many, many times a day.
(I, seriously, I think I have a problem with this.)
I compare myself to the people in my life--to Paul (am I as a good a [fill in the blank] as he is?), to my family (am I as connected, as good a daughter/sister/aunt, etc.), to my friends (you name the topic), to other actors, to other yoga teachers, to other teachers in any discipline, to other women, to other women specifically my age, to other men my age, to other "wives", to other yoga students, to other people who live on my block, to old people, to BABIES for gods sakes (they're so wide open and present...why can't I be that present), to Mother Theresa, to Ghandi, to President Obama, to anyone who is on the news for doing anything truly inspired, to Oprah and to this one girl in my yoga studio who I think might be enlightened.
I'm sorry...did you just say you compare yourself TO GHANDI?
Yes, voice of reason, I did. Oh, what, I'm just supposed to resign myself to not being like Ghandi?! I could be like Ghandi. If I could just stop worrying about stupid shit, I could totally be Ghandi.
And here, of course, is where the problem lies, because (and this may come as a bit of a shock) no, I can not be Ghandi. Or Oprah. Or that girl at my yoga studio. Because those identities have already been taken. Also, most of those people, the ones who seem to just get it, the ones who are on zee path...probably they don't spend a lot of time comparing themselves to other people. As it's hard to move very fast down any path when you are stopping frequently to stab yourself with small comparison knives.
Because the problem with comparison, with growth by means of comparison, is that...it never ENDS. Never ever ever, if you are basing your good-ness or not good-ness on what you are doing in comparison to what other people are doing...will you ever find any lasting sense of peace. Beeeeeecause (and I know this from experience) as soon as you've worked through one kink...as soon as you've befriended that girl or decoded the life of Ghandi enough that you don't feel quite so small in comparison...some new shiny person is going to come along who has it all figured out IN A TOTALLY DIFFERENT WAY and off you'll be thrown, once again.
It's like this, people...
A few of the studios I'm teaching in have mirrored walls, or just one mirrored wall, and it drives me CRAZY, because there is always one student (or two or three) who spends all of class checking themselves out in the mirror. Now, some might say this could be a helpful practice because you can see what your body is or is not doing, and where you may or may not be out of line, and that's true, you can...but as soon as you take that mirror away, what are you left with? You're left with a mental image of how your body looks doing a pose, and all your effort will go into recreating what you think the pose is supposed to look like. Practice without a mirror, however, means that you have to get deep...you might have to close your eyes...you might have to rest your mind on subtleties of movement you didn't even know you HAD...the turn of your femur in your hip socket, the clench and release of your toes...and suddenly you are guiding yourself from this deep place of knowing. Because when you're in that deep, and the alignment clicks into place, you don't SEE it (comparsion), you FEEL it. You feel it's rightness. You feel that steady ground of the right path beneath your feet.
And so, if comparison is an act of violence, then to get sweeter with ourselves, we have to pull our eyes away from the reflection...we have to start measuring our worth, our success, our goodness, by that "A-ha" click of bone stacking on top of bone, of muscle releasing, and of the deep sense in our own bodies that we are, indeed, just fine as we are.
About this, I think that Ghandi would approve...
