She looks out at the world and compares.
Maybe I should be more like her.
Why is he that way?
And the more she looks, the more she deceives herself into believing that these things aren’t just happening through the screen of her own consciousness. Whatever she sees becomes part of herself.
But comparison doesn’t allow for this kind of honesty.
It seeks only to improve and to destroy, communicating one clear message:
I am not enough as I am.
If I am sad, I am not enough.
If I am happy, I am not enough.
I must improve.
I must change this.
Why can’t I be more like her?
A life of comparison is natural. It is also deceptive, because we can become so lost in comparison that we forget who we are.
I want to be more like her.
I want to have a love like hers.
The mind does this again and again, until eventually it becomes a habit so firmly established that we mistake it for who we are.
But it isn’t the truth.
The truth of who we are has no additions.
It isn’t beautiful or ugly.
It isn’t loved or unloved.
It simply is.
It is the fire inside every desire.
The hope inside every person.
The life inside comparison itself.
But when we confuse life with the stories we create about it, we begin to think erroneously. We become misguided.
The paradox, however, is that we must come to know these things within ourselves.
To see ourselves doing them.
To notice the comparison.
To notice the desire to become someone else.
And then, gently, to guide ourselves away.
Not through punishment.
Not through shame.
Not by comparing ourselves to some imagined version of who we should be.
But by returning.
You are enough as you are.
Your experiences, your actions, even your mistakes are part of a life that was guided and made possible by a life that continues no matter what you do, and no matter how much you compare.
The life was always there.
Before you looked at her.
Before you asked why you weren’t him.
Before you decided you needed to become something else.
It was there.
And it is still there.
Vachon Imagined 
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