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There was a day, not too long ago, when the sun rose exactly as it always does, but it felt like it rose for everyone but me.
I remember that day in slow motion. My neighbour’s kid won a medal. My colleagues got promoted. My cousin announced his engagement on Instagram. Even the dog in the next building seemed to have a better life, tail wagging, eyes sparkling, someone always calling his name.
And me?
I sat in my room, surrounded by stale air and old dreams. I kept scrolling, staring at the blue light with red eyes, looking for something, someone, to make me feel okay again. I didn’t even know what ‘okay’ was anymore. All I knew was, I wasn’t it.
The tragedy of it all? I wasn’t even unhappy. Not really. I had food, a job, people who loved me, books that smelled like rainy days, and songs that knew my wounds. But none of that counted. Not that day.
Why?
Because I compared.
I think happiness dies, not with a heartbreak, not with poverty, not with loneliness, but with arithmetic. With the addition and subtraction of someone else’s highlight reel to your behind-the-scenes mess.
I didn’t feel sad because I lacked something. I felt sad because someone else had it better.
Or so I thought.
We live in a world where our self-worth is measured in story views and the speed of reply on WhatsApp. And when someone tells you “Don’t compare”, it’s like asking someone drowning in a pool to stop gasping for air. Because comparison is the water we live in. It’s invisible, constant, and everywhere.
You walk into a room, and the first thing you notice is not the art on the wall, or the warmth of the tea, but whether someone else is thinner, richer, funnier, smarter, or simply… happier.
Comparison doesn’t feel like poison. It feels like motivation. Until it begins to rot everything soft inside you.
There’s a strange irony to it; no one is comparing your pain, only your pleasure. People don’t scroll to see who’s grieving better. They scroll to see who’s winning faster.
And so, somewhere between their smiles and your stillness, your heart begins to fold itself into corners, thinking it doesn’t belong in the centre of the page anymore.
That night, I cried. Not the loud, dramatic kind. The quiet tears, the ones that feel like someone slowly pouring water over a paper you wrote your dreams on.
I was searching for something to wipe off my teary eyes.
I wasn’t ready to be prepared for what I saw next. Not even by a great philosopher.
I found my old school diary. I opened it. A random page.
And there it was.
In my 6th-grade handwriting,
“One day, I’ll be someone who earns 50,000 a month, lives in a flat with a balcony, and doesn’t have to go to school anymore.”
I laughed.
No, I wept and laughed. The kind of ugly laugh that echoes against walls. Because in that moment, I realised, I had everything I once cried for.
Everything.
But I had forgotten.
Because instead of sitting with the joy of my own becoming, I was too busy gatecrashing into someone else’s story.
I messaged my cousin to congratulate him on his engagement.
He replied with a voice note.
“Bro, I’m marrying because I’m scared to be alone. And look at you, you seem so at peace with your single life. I envy that so much.”
I stared at the phone.
And then threw it across the bed, dramatically, like in a bad Bollywood climax.
Turns out, we were both comparing.
Two unhappy people, each wanting the other’s version of ‘happy.’
I feel most people aren’t unhappy.
They are just bad at math.
Especially when they are calculating their joy using someone else’s calculator.
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