I recently saw a Facebook post where the meme said “When I am driving in a rain storm, I carefully watch other people’s wiper speed to make sure I am not being too dramatic.” At first, I chuckled at the sentiment. We all have probably had the experience of having the speed of our wipers being either too slow or too fast. It can be hard to get it just right!
As I thought about the post, I found myself wondering how often we look to others for what we should or should not be doing. I believe that two potentially dangerous things happen when we compare ourselves to others. When we focus on other people’s wiper speed, we risk judging ourselves and judging others.
Judging Ourselves
Comparing ourselves to others is a dangerous thing to do. It is a flawed process that rarely leaves us in a good position. When we measure ourselves up against someone else, we most often compare our liabilities to their assets. Think about this for a minute!
When we look to others to measure how well we are doing, we are looking at their outsides. This is all we can see.
So, we look at their appearance, their clothes, their muscles, their speech, their behavior and more. We also may look at their possessions and all the things they have accumulated.
Then, we take that information and compare ourselves and what we have and are to that outward measure. However, we cannot help but add what we know about our “insides” to the equation. So, we compare only what we outwardly observe in others to what we are inward and outward. This is not a fair comparison.
I remember counseling with a friend as she told me about how inadequate and frustrated and overwhelmed she was. As part of her story, she began to tell me about another friend of ours who she wanted to be more like. She told me how much she admired her because she was so this and so that. She was saying her wiper blades were not moving at the right speed and this other woman had it figured all out.
Imagine my experience just a week later being in the home of that other woman. Her house was a mess, her hair was frazzled, and she vented about how hard her life was and how she was struggling to keep it together. Then, she did the most interesting thing. She brought up the first woman. What did she do? She admired and praised her while she delivered lashing to herself. She believed her wipers were moving at the wrong speed and the first woman had it all right.
What an ironic and instructive experience for me. I learned dramatically how painful we can make it for ourselves when we compare ourselves to others. It is rarely ever fair or rational to us or them. It hardly ever results in a positive feeling or self-improvement. Comparing our wiper speed to others rarely results in good and reliable data or feelings.
Judging Others
Watching what others do can also be quite problematic because it may lead to criticism, contempt, and even harsh treatment. What happens to us when we get so focused on what other people are doing? We can too easily lose perspective and become condemning and inappropriately judgmental. We are rarely good judges of what is going on. In fact, we may even be dramatic.
Watching what others do creates problems because we have to watch them through our windshield. We are limited by the lenses we look through. Our vision is likely clouded by our own storms and rain drops and bug guts! So, when we look out at others, we are highly likely to see ourselves as better than them. This is dangerous.
When we judge others we naturally become myopic or near-sighted. Let’s face it! It is quite easy to point out the bugs on someone else’s windshield and self-righteously condemn them for their lack of attention or knowledge or whatever. We tend to take out a magnifying glass when we look at others, not recognizing how we may not accurately see the whole. When we zero in on the behavior of others, we may see the proverbial tree and miss the forest.
The truth is, we simply do not know what other people are thinking, what they are going through, and what they may need. Often we do not know anything about their challenges, upbringing, and more. Simply, we do not know what storms they are driving through. So, we better judge carefully. Or better yet, we could resist the temptation to judge at all.
This is my New Year’s Resolution. I am going to get so focused on driving my own car that I don’t pay attention to what is going on in the car next to me. I am going to set my wiper speed at the best one I can find for me and let others do the same. There is great happiness in choosing to focus on what I know, need, and can do and let others do the same. I don’t need to look to anyone else for how I should be. Even more, I never need to judge someone else.
This may be a good measure of our happiness. Can you drive through that rainstorm without once looking to someone else’s wiper speed? When you are more concerned about your speed and the road you are on, then, you are really getting somewhere!
So, I might re-word that post to say something like “I am too busy focusing on getting through my own storms and challenges and blessings to be worried about the speed by which you are getting through yours.”
