Don't Be a Shark

“Stop comparing yourself to them.” We’ve all been told that. We’ve all told ourselves that. Yet we keep doing it. I won’t go as far as saying it’s human nature, but it sure seems like it. After all, it’s how we learn. Babies learn to walk because they unconsciously compare themselves to everyone else walking while they are crawling. Babies learn to speak by comparing themselves to everyone else around them talking while they themselves are babbling. Comparison does create progress in those instances. But in other cases, comparison can have the opposite effect. It hurts our growth and development. We can become trapped in the captivity of comparison. The question is: does our comparing cause us to compete with others or be inspired and motivated?

Marine biologists recently found the dead body of a massive great-white shark. It hadn’t been hit by a boat or killed by a hunter. It was not attacked by a group of marauding bottle-nosed dolphins. Neither had it choked on plastic grocery bags floating in the ocean. They couldn’t figure out what happened, but it was extra perplexing because the shark’s frame was humongous. But they could tell something went horribly wrong because it had become very gaunt. It was almost as if the shark had starved to death.

And then they found the shark’s journal. The last line it had ever written in it’s journal was, “I cannot live another day like this. I will be the king of the jungle or die trying.” He wanted to be a lion.

Apparently, someone dropped their phone into the ocean while watching a documentary about lions. The phone was waterproof enough to allow the video to play long enough to ruin this great white’s life.

Dumb story, right? No way that could be true. Seriously, which mobile phone company has a strong enough signal to reach several hundred feet UNDER water?

But you get my point. As ridiculous as it would be for a shark to kill itself trying to be a lion, is just as ridiculous as you and I trying to be somebody we are not.

We look at other people and their lives and we wonder why we are not like that. Why we are not as successful, funny, smart, healthy, liked, etc. We watch, and follow, and scroll and become irritated and frustrated because we have our life and they have theirs. And theirs is definitely better.

Stop it.

“But they are faster,” said the snail about the cheetah. “But they are so fun and athletic,” said the sloth about the monkey. “But everyone likes them and calls them their best friend,” said the cat, “and all I get is this old, crazy lady.”

But they all made it onto Noah’s ark. God didn’t have some standard of qualification to make it on. He took them, each a few of its own kind.

So just be you.

When we compare ourselves to others we are behaving as if our life does not matter. We get caught up trying to live someone else’s life as if we don’t exist. Live your own life. Understand that other will get opportunities we don’t. Others will inherit things in their life and biology that we don’t. Others will live in places that may make life more pleasant and “fun.” That’s life.

You and I only get so much time on this planet. We will have our own opportunities and experiences. Don’t waste it like that shark floating around in life, carried and tossed by the winds and waves, angry and sad that it wasn’t in another ocean, or even a land-dwelling creature.

Live your life like you matter. Live your life like you exist. You are not a mirror. You are not a mannequin. You have time, chance, opportunity, energy and intelligence. They are yours and no one else’s. Live your life. It’s the only one you have.