Things Take Time
On adulting, comparison, social media, and the impatience to become everything at once
A big part of adulting has always been moving into a fast-paced life where you want to reach the top of everything. Now that you are earning, you constantly think that you have just 24 hours in a day and so many things to do: things you aspire to do, things you dreamt of doing, and things you feel you should already have achieved. Achieving these things gives you a sense of personal high and makes you stand out from the crowd. You are liked for it, though you might be hated for it as well by some people, but certainly, you are talked about in your circles. This feeling of being a local celebrity has seeped into the lives of a lot of individuals, especially in a post-liberalised India where, after getting a good education, you enter the workforce and, in some quarters, earn a hell lot of money for a country that is still a middle-income economy. You shrug off the worries of your Tier 3 or Tier 2 city or town and wholeheartedly accept the urbanity of metropolitan cities.
This somehow creates a rat race where everyone wants to achieve everything, often at the wrong age. Social media has exaggerated this a lot. The internet has made us forget that things take time. Every day, you wake up, or after a full day of work, you open Instagram, maybe just to relax and watch some funny videos. You start scrolling a little and you see someone who is 25 with a million in their bank account, living an amazing life. Then, in the next video, you see a wealthy man with a beautiful wife, beautiful children and a wonderful house, living what appears to be an amazing life. You scroll again and you see someone smarter than you, more intelligent, more talented, stronger, taller, with bigger capacities and qualities that you could never have. And then you start asking yourself: What have I been doing with my life? Why am I so late to everything?
My opinion, which may be branded as mediocre or being average by some people, is that by judging yourself this way, you are being incredibly unfair to yourself. What you see on the internet, or even in real life, are different people with different backgrounds and different skills, who have become specialists in their own areas. When you compare yourself to a successful entrepreneur, you are comparing yourself to someone who has spent years of their life building, investing, trying and failing, and trying again to make it work. But you have just started a business yesterday and already want results today.
Or take the example of a professor or a subject matter expert who is a specialist in a particular topic such as philosophy, literature or other areas of culture. You want to be as intelligent as that person, but the fact is that they have probably spent five to ten years reading and studying consistently, every single day. You just opened a classical book by Tolstoy or Keats yesterday and you already want to be an intellectual. Another famous example is fitness influencers. You want to have the idealised body that they have, even though they may have spent three to five years training, dieting and doing everything they can to achieve those results, perhaps even using peptides or steroids.
We desire the qualities, virtues and abilities of other people without recognising that those qualities may have taken years of effort to develop. At the end of it, you want to become the best at everything. You want to have the best qualities of everyone for yourself, which is not an easy challenge, because you would need to put in an enormous amount of effort and invest years of your life to achieve all these things together.
Get Pranit Prasoon’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
But having said that, you cannot be the best at everything. You can try to improve yourself in different areas of your life. No doubt, it is not going to happen in one night. They say that comparison is the thief of joy, and it is true, especially when it is the wrong comparison. When you compare yourself to who you were yesterday, that is the riht comparison. You are the person you need to beat.
Kahlil Gibran said, “The Divine said, Love your enemy. I obeyed and I loved myself.” This is such a beautiful line because it reveals a certain reality: yes, we are essentially our own enemies. The battle is always against ourselves, and it makes sense to think like that because you can only overcome yourself. That is the only thing that is truly under your control.
You can start this today, right now. You can become a better version of yourself. You can start waking up earlier, eating better, training better, and eliminating habits that are harmful to your soul or your daily life. You can take control of yourself and stop caring so much about others. Life gets so much better when you do.
After all, why are we so sorry for ourselves? You could literally just say, so what? So what if I am not that good? So what if I don’t have so much money in my bank account? So what if I am not that tall or good-looking? So what if I am not so smart? I can still seek and achieve the things I want if I stop comparing myself to others and start improving and becoming a better version of myself.
You don’t need to become the perfect person tomorrow. You have a whole life, an entire life, and you need to enjoy this process of becoming better, of developing yourself. And if you feel you have missed the bus, don’t worry. There is always another one coming.
Right now, you have the opportunity to change. Don’t overthink it. Stop thinking about things you didn’t do or things you could have done differently. You have the opportunity to do it right now. That’s the important thing.
Just enjoy the process and remember: things take time. And comparison is the thief of joy.
