Comparison culture and how to shake it off for good
It's not helpful, it's not great, and it's draining
Imagine you’ve died. Imagine however that you still have a bit of awareness left, like maybe you’re sort of hovering over your body. In the space between worlds. And it remains like that for a few days. So you get to witness the funeral arrangements. Imagine in fact that you’re in the funeral home with your kids or your partner and you’re watching from the ceiling (maybe you’re in a hospital nightie or something more glam like a nice kimono because you died at home).
‘What sort of coffin do you want?’ the director asks your family.
‘Well that one looks okay,’ your relative says and they point at a perfectly nice coffin that some might call a tad basic.
You gaze down at the coffin and then you swoop off inexplicably (but in fact you can do anything because you’re in the spirit world but don’t realise it as the whole experience is new and not something you’ve been through before), and you are hovering above another family in another room and they’re choosing a coffin for their loved one. They’re pointing to a casket in the catalogue (this is an old fashioned funeral home and they still use catalogues rather than show you coffins online), and it’s made out of this luxurious, very rarefied wood (only grown in Italy), and its lined with sheepskin and has this cushioned headrest that is velvet, and there’s music being pumped in which sounds like Radiohead (Slow Down maybe?) but could be something else (in fact it could be your favourite track of all time but you haven’t written these things down so your family are going to play Jim Croce and that makes you cringe because it was a guilty pleasure back when you were alive).
‘We’ll take the top of the range one,’ the relative says and the funeral director smiles.
This coffin is like 25 grand. You feel miffed. The coffin that your family landed on was nowhere near as nice as this one, the one that you’re gazing at in your position sort of flattened against the ceiling and your arms hanging down. All the blood is flowing into your hands and your veins are popping out. You notice the scar from the IV that was in your hand. At least that’s done for now. The pain. The boredom of the hospital. The terrible terrible food. This woman, this person, the one getting a lovely posh coffin, she probably was in a private hospital with a harp played each morning at the end of her bed.
The comparison thing has kicked in yet again.
Someone else has something better than you.
Something better than you.
You flap your arms and end up going down the corridor and you’re back inside your room, with your family and you try and get their attention by throwing a pencil across the room, but they think it’s just the wind that’s blown in from the window.
‘Weird,’ the funeral guy says, ‘I’ll just close that now,’ and he makes his way over to the window and shuts it.
You try and get a stapler to fly into your loved ones hand, to send them a sign, to open the catalogue at the right page so they can choose the more luxurious coffin but it’s no good. You can’t actually move things in the spirit world. You will be in a cheap coffin and Jim Croce will be played as they walk you up the aisle. Nobody will know that you had good music taste and wanted some nice sheepskin inside to keep you warm.
You can only watch, mute and in fact nobody can hear you so it’s like those nightmares you used to have when you were alive. Shouting at people but nobody responding. SO THIS IS WHAT IT’S LIKE WHEN YOU’RE DEAD!
You relax then and accept the rules. Then you feel your body going limp because you’re about to be sucked into a different vortex. The vortex is where you go when you are heading towards the after life, but they need to weigh up the good and bad things you’ve done first. You’re not entirely sure how good you were but it seems that you spent an inordinate amount of time living in your own head, having arguments with yourself and this got in the way of how generous you were with other people.
There is a large figure, someone who looks like Mama Cass from the ‘Mamas and The Papas,’ and she’s welcoming you with giant arms that envelope you. It feels good. It has been a few hours since you felt any contact and you were beginning to get cold.
‘My nightie is open at the back,’ you mutter to her.
‘No matter, and listen,’ she says, ‘I saw you back there with the coffin thing. You were feeling bad right because you were comparing yours to the big and luxurious one right?’
You shake your head in shame.
‘Has it really taken you this long to realise that none of it matters?’ she continues, ‘Don’t you want to let that shit go? Has it made you happy?’
You look at your feet. Mama Cass has gone. Your body is evaporating and you’re turning into shiny stars, like the kind that fly out of a confetti gun, and there’s this overwhelming sense of calm and you sort of fly at a weird angle.
You hear your relatives talking about the coffin but it’s very faint.
‘This is what she would have wanted,’ one of them says, ‘She wasn’t the kind of person to get jealous. She always had time for others you know.’
And you feel good that you kept this comparison disease to yourself most of your life.
Your dad’s fingers reach for yours.
Hey it’s you, you say.