This time of year brings particular temptation to indulge in comparison. One of the most illuminating and annoying realisations of childhood is noticing for the first time that there appears to be a correlation between the gifts Santa brings you and parental income, whether of your parents or those of other children. “They’re getting the good toys all year round!”, you’d think. “The last thing an obnoxious nepo baby needs is a new Nintendo Switch 2.”
This is often a formative experience of comparison. We don’t have to be jealous to notice it – we’re trying to make sense of fairness and what it looks like. As we grow up, the stories we tell ourselves about other people become subtler, more personal, and often morally weighted. We notice the genetically lucky friends who are tall, beautiful or athletic. We shrink in our own estimation compared to the friend who is gifted with an innate aptitude for numbers or just being especially likable. Many of these advantages are reinforced by circumstance. Some talents are easier to cultivate when your parents can afford the equipment, the tuition or the travel. There are very few champion skiers or polo players from deprived areas.
Comparison isn’t something we learn through philosophy or a form of moral insight. Rather, it’s intuitive to us, honed through observation. We notice first that good things are not necessarily equally distributed and we learn to accept this as a feature of being alive. But comparison isn’t really about facts so much as the stories we tell about them. We decide who we are by measuring ourselves against others. This is a grim part-time job for most people until January, when we all go full-time.
[ January is a tender month for most people. More challenging than we admitOpens in new window ]
The new year is an annual festival of self-flagellation. We look around, and back into the past at other versions of ourselves, and we do the arithmetic. Who is fitter, thinner, richer? Who has fewer lines on their forehead? Whose children are the most emotionally regulated? Who seems in control? Just days after being encouraged to soak croissants in Baileys before deep frying them, we cannot move for messaging of change and self-improvement.
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What do you mean you’re not starting your workday with ice cold sea swimming at 4am? Have you given up alcohol yet? Have you lost the 10 pounds you were encouraged to gain at Christmas? Have you planned your career pivot? Updated your vision board?
When everything spirals into optimisation and comparison culture, I like to reread Epictetus. He is, among other things, among the funnier and more scathing stoic philosophers. Born into slavery in the first century AD, Epictetus was under no illusion that the world is fair. He wasn’t trying to make it so. He simply believed that some things are up to us, but the vast majority are not. Our bodies, social status, reputations, advantages and disadvantages are far less within our control than we like to imagine. Our judgments, though, are. So are our priorities and how we respond to the things outside our control.
Modern internet “broicism” has badly tainted stoicism, turning it into a sort of bloated, acquisitive optimisation culture. It’s often touted as the personal philosophy of the most insufferable guy you’ve ever met. He’s wearing a spray-on shirt (so you can see his biceps), and he’s currently developing an app. Yet stoicism is not about outcomes, about getting what you want, or even about being happier or healthier. It has never been about moral indifference or emotional detachment. It’s simpler than that, and much more difficult. Epictetus advises us to stop outsourcing our sense of value to other people and to the things we can’t control.
[ New Year resolutions my foot. How can we change if we don’t even know who we are?Opens in new window ]
Comparison does have a valuable function. We learn by watching others. We can be inspired by someone who did the hard thing – turned poor health habits around or found the bravery to leave the job they hate for a better one. They model what it means to challenge ourselves. Epictetus would say they encourage us to lead more virtuous lives. But we shouldn’t allow what another person does to determine our worth. We should not be rendered passive and self-pitying or resentful by comparison. We shouldn’t emulate others either. What matters to Epictetus is not what anyone else is doing, but whether we ourselves are attending to things we can control.
Epictetus cared about progress – whether we’re making choice that improve rather than worsen us. Whether we’re being truthful with ourselves. Whether we are genuinely trying. At this time of year it can feel as though the pressure to transform ourselves is paralytic. We don’t need a vision board or a spray-on shirt. We just need to focus on what it is we can control.
