A comparison was meant to be motivational, it was meant to drive you to want to be better or to give your best, but it’s dangerous. People usually don’t compare themselves with others who are not doing as well as they are doing. We compare with people who seem to be doing better than us and murder our own joy and zest.
Comparing ourselves with others is like some kind of benchmark, we take feedback from other people’s lives, and we use it to drive ourselves. This has been defined as foolish, however, as sometimes we are comparing our chapter 1 with someone else chapter 12.
Where comparison started getting buried for me was a conversation I believe I had with God years ago. When God asked me if I wanted to die before the person I wanted to get ahead of. The question shook me, if I’m not willing to get to death before them, why am I trying to beat them in life? Comparison with people who are doing better than you seems futile, you cannot plan to outlive someone you don’t want to out-die.
A better, more gracious way to look at life, however, is not through the prism of who is doing better than you but the prism of how far you have come and how lucky you have been. If any of us really look back at our lives and not at what we don’t have but what we do have, we will really be grateful. For one, you are alive when many have died, you are healthy when many are sick, you are happy where many are sad, and you have hope where lots have given up. You have been favored, lucky, and blessed.
When we ignore our luck, we fail to realize our responsibility to others. When nature has been kind to you, you owe it to others to be kind to them. Think about where you are in life right now. For this moment, forget about the things that didn’t work, but think about the privileges you have enjoyed. Think about it, you have been lucky, you have been blessed. There are people with the total sum of skill sets you have who haven’t been so lucky. You owe the world around you some giveaway from the bounty you have enjoyed.
“Those whose palm kernels were cracked for them by a benevolent spirit should not consider others lazy” – Chinua Achebe.
Kind Regards,
Adeolu Akinyemi.
1 thought on “If You Ignore Your Luck, You May Miss Your Duty”
best allergy pills for adults non drowsy allergy medication canada 3rd generation antihistamines list