142. It Doesn’t Compare

Nora shares how we shouldn’t compare our hard things (even though we do).

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

 I’m Nora McInerny, and I have another podcast called terrible, thanks for asking, where we interview people about the terrible thing they’ve lived through, or are living with. Where we talk about terrible things that a lot of us grew up thinking we shouldn’t talk about. 

And When I sit down to interview someone  they usually start their interview by telling me okay, so I know this doesn’t compare to: your husband dying, or losing your family in a tragic accident, or your father drinking himself to death. or or or…they’ll list off a million ways their story really isn’t that bad.

Even though they’ve reached out! To a show! Called Terrible thanks for asking!!!

But this show is called it’s going to be okay. And I think that in order for things to be more okay, we need to agree on some ground rules. 

Really, I actually think there’s just one rule. So rule number one of one. We don’t compare. Which is bullshit because of course, we compare, we compare all the time and sometimes occasionally we do it favorably. We’ll look at someone and think, “Oh, that sucks way more than what I’m going through.” But is that favorable? Sometimes we do it in this way, we look at our own pain and think, “This one wins, give me all the points. No one in the world has suffered quite like I have. Here’s the proof.” And right now, I’m holding up an invisible trophy above my head. I’m hoisting it and you can’t see that. But… Who wins and what is the point of winning? What could you possibly walk away with once that heavy metal is placed around your neck? 

We compare, even though we say we don’t and that we won’t. And of course we shouldn’t. We do it. And sometimes it’s subtler. It comes out like this, it comes out like saying to each other and to ourselves, have some perspective. And perspective is valuable. Of course it is. It would be foolish to think that the person holding a sign on the side of the road is carrying the same burden as a person who lost their emergency savings or, you know, is going to maybe have to cut back a little on on on on their on their manicure budget. But they’re carrying their own burdens and the weight is unknowable to one another.

 Most importantly, being in something is a perspective. Being right where you are, right in the middle of it, that is also perspective. It’s different from how you will feel in a week, in a day, in five years. But it is real. It is valid. Sometimes I think that the reality of asking people to have some perspective is really just a subtle way of saying, share my perspective, see it my way. 

But I think that the more helpful thing is to just agree to agree that hard things are hard. And your hard thing and my hard thing are different, and so are we. Teddy Roosevelt allegedly said that comparison is the thief of joy but I think it is also the thief of more than just joy. It robs us of our ability to see each other, to see ourselves. If we’re busy placing all of our hurts on one of those grocery store scales, we’re not feeling, we’re not healing, we’re not doing anything but trying to quantify the unquantifiable.

Everyone who says “it doesn’t compare” is technically right because it doesn’t compare. We cannot compare apples and tube socks, snails and goats, hamsters and…anything! All of these things are in their own categories, and if it were a contest WHICH IT IS NOT! Hamsters would win!

It doesn’t compare because it doesn’t have to. 

OUTRO MUSIC 

CREDITS