Being Point

Tag: comparison

  • “My One Regret In Life Is That I Am Not Someone Else.” ~ Woody Allen

    We humans have often beaten ourselves up based on comparisons that we make of ourselves with others. Comparison, skillfully used, can be highly beneficial. Yet, if unskillfully used, comparison causes enormous self-inflicted pain.

    Woody Allen said, “My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.”

    Have you ever thought that someone else was inherently better than you? More “deserving” of love and happiness? Can you see that beating yourself up, because you had established a set of rules that judged you harshly as compared to someone else, has been needless suffering?

    How about cutting yourself a break and giving up beating yourself up once and for all? You can declare it a behavior that no longer works for you. As situations arise that could degenerate into beating yourself up, you can choose differently. What do you have to lose?

  • Doing Your Best May Still Be Imperfect: Are You Okay With That?

    Thanks to Vince, in our monthly men’s group, for choosing to facilitate last Saturday’s session on “doing your best” – now a great topic for Study Hall this week. “Best” is a powerful (and sometimes loaded) term which means different things to different people.  The word means “superior” and we think of “best” in words like “as good as it gets.”

    Yet, there may well be flaws even in anything that may up to that point be the best.  Churchill famously said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.”  He acknowledges its flaws, but asserts that democracy is the best form of government compared to other forms.

    The concept of “doing your best” does not mean perfection, but it does imply an advance intention of taking action as “well” as you can.  There’s “best” for the individual and “best” for the group, so how do you reconcile that often different points of view?  How do you feel about doing your best?  What is the appropriate role of comparison in doing your best?