I’m preaching to myself first. I have recently found muhself, while perched in the bed at my roommates’ house, doing this very thing. Sideways looking, right (and past the hunk of burning love lying next to me snoring) and left, and finding myself in the snares of the comparison trap.
“Why are they back in their house already? I mean, we’ve been out of our house for over 4 months now. Maybe they did a better job getting their stuff lined up. Maybe they are more connected with construction work. Maybe their contractor likes them better than ours does. Maybe they…”
Somebody call the waaaaambulance. I’m coding over here.
Recently it’s come to roost on me that a lot of us are living in those trap’s snares. Social media posts only exacerbate the clutches of the trap, digging them in deeper and taking root in our minds with such tenacity that their weedy presence puts a choke-hold on the beauty that is poised to live there yet we allow (yes, we allow) to be buried beneath the manure of comparison. Instagram feeds with the most beautiful of all the things and filters that mask and make a picture of a coke can a work of art, y’all and editing components that cloak truths like cellulite and wrinkles and boogs lurking in the darkness of a nostril… Facebook with albums of THE.most.wonderful.(trip, birthday party, gift, house, new car, fill in the blank).ever! Like ever, ever! And you’re not there! And you’ll never get that! And you didn’t get a party for your birthday! And nor were you invited and you’re friends with at least 4 of those people in that picture! And you can’t afford it! And your car has dings and old french fries and moldy gold fish and old homework in it! And your house-ah-your house got creamed by a storm and you aren’t even living in it! And now you feel like a large sack of old, used up, worthless trash that needs to be dropped off at the Goodwill after rolling around in the trunk of a car for a few months!
Doesn’t that feel amazing? I mean, you could take on the world with the self-talk you just engaged!
Of course, I kid, kid. But don’t you sometimes find yourself looking sideways too? If so, I’m here to give us a pep talk. If you said no, you are probably telling a story to yourself, or you are just some very enlightened individual bursting with self confidence and rainbows and sunshine (and the rest of us are watching you in a lateral fashion with a longing heart, feeding the weeds in our minds with the manure known as comparison…)
But seriously, y’all. Let’s stop.
We’re not going that way.
We’re going forward. Which means ahead. It implies propelling, evolving, onward-ing!
And while I’ve always heard the old adage, “Don’t look backwards, you’re not going that way,” I think it applies to our peripheral vision, too. And then quotes like, “The grass is greener on the other side because your neighbor waters it,” implies our periphery, too. Looking right and left and what we think we see seems to look better at that angle than what we seeing right ahead of us. And then sometimes, sometimes, looking sideways and then thinking our grass is much greener because we would never do that in our yard. Heavens, no!! The dog piles in our yard do NOT stink like their’s do! Further, our dog doesn’t even poop because he’s so much better than their’s! As if!
Y’all know. You do. Come on. Y’all’ve watched Hoarders:Buried Alive or Dance Moms or Intervention (or really anything in that vein of television programming) and thought the same.exact.thing. At least once before…
I believe God gave us peripheral vision for various other reasons than comparing ourselves to others. I think we have it for things like seeing danger coming at us so we can fight or flight– for times such as when a roach is crawling on the wall beside you at a restaurant — and we know immediately to jump up screaming and flight our fannies out of there. Things like that.
It’s there for shopping at Target, like when a cute thing just lurches at the corner of your eye thanks to that beautiful gift of periphery and then you know you have.to.have.it. Thank you peripheral vision for finding that adorable notebook with a cactus and the snazziest alpaca socks and the cuh-utest pair of flats that were made for someone like me! I would have never even known they were there if it weren’t for you, side eyes. You are the best! Yes. Lots of use for this side gaze gift at Target. Lots.
Parenting also employs the sideways vision. In fact, it’s probably the most useful in this role. How else would you know that your daughter is mean mugging you on the ride to school, or that your son is grabbing a handful of candy from the pantry, or that your other daughter is creating a selfie laden music video on her electronic device, all while you yourself are doing something else parent-y? We need the side view vision here, people. And while looking on webmd, I discovered the medical terminology for this, and I quote, is “eyes in the back of your head.” They are necessary weapons tools in the warfare known as parenting.
So all of this long windedness to say–let’s all try to stop looking sideways. Let’s trust and know that the road ahead of us holds “stuff” that was created for us individually and there are many, many good, good gifts along the way. The “stuff” in the medians isn’t for me. It’s for someone else’s path. And while sometimes the wildflowers growing in the someone else’s medians look awfully good and so.much.better. than the potholed road we feel we might be traveling, the curves up ahead hold something even more beautiful and better if we just keep moving forward, keeping our eyes on the road ahead. In other words: Do you, boo.
But if you’re looking sideways, you’ll miss it.
Stop looking there because you aren’t going that way.
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