Tao and Zen

Today I came to a startling realization. I know when I say it, you'll laugh, because it's so obvious. It's one of those platitudes that people recite to each other to seem enlightened or to dispense the wisdom of the ages. It's simple common sense, which is to say that it's not simple or common at all.

It's this: I don't need to compare myself to anyone else in order to feel that I'm successful. No, let me take that further, and make that implied confession: I don't have to put someone else down to feel better about myself.

Okay, I knew this. It's not exactly new news. But it's taken me all this time to internalize it, to put into practice what I could recite till I turned blue. All this time I've been trying, but failing, not to compare myself to other people. All this time I've been glancing sidelong and saying, "At least I don't do X, like Y does." I've been paying far too much attention to what other people do and have and get, and applying myself far too little.

What gets me is that such mean comparison goes utterly against my personal philosophy. In general I try to be true to my principles, and I think that largely I succeed, but obviously there's always more I can do to learn and grow. My guess is that I'm going to slip now and then and worry about what "the other guy" is doing, but that's okay; now that I know how to do the steps of this dance, I can practice them over and over until I get them right.

I'm not absolutely sure what it was that changed, that set that part of my mind that was imprisoned free. I know I was thinking about someone I know, someone I care about but with whom I'm currently in an adversarial position, and all of a sudden I realized that I didn't have any reason to compare where I was and what I was doing to this person's path, that we'd diverged so much that there was no longer any point to a comparison.

The sense of liberation I felt at that point - I'd just begun my drive home - was so exhilarating that I couldn't stop smiling the whole way, even though I'd previously been in a grumpy mood. I feel so peaceful now. I've figured out another piece of the puzzle. I can stop chaining myself to other people, and just be the best person that I can be. And better still, I can simply wish well to people whom I've been wasting time and energy resenting.

I'm doing what I should be doing, and I can just assume everyone else is too and not worry. That's just aewsome.