Campus Chronicles #2

The Cost of Comparison

By Pynshailang Lyngkhoi

“Comparison is the killer of joy.” I heard this line while scrolling on Instagram, and it stuck with me for a couple of months—until recently I was in class with Harsh—when we began talking about the lows of life—it hit me and never in my life did I resonate more. Think about it, how often do we measure our happiness to someone else’s? A stranger’s holiday, a classmate’s grades or a friend’s new project. And honestly, it’s not the fact that we were never happy—we were— it’s just that the very moment we compare our joy to theirs, we make our joy seem—small, our joy shrinks and suddenly it seems to matter—less.

What once seemed enough now feels small.

And the irony about it all is that—we compare ourselves to fragments of people’s lives, we hold up our entire existence against their single moment of joy that we see from them. And to make it worse—today’s world of social media, only adds more to this need of gratification, of feeling “complete” even when you already were. Seeing highlight reels, but not the struggles behind it, and in the process, we turn a blind eye to our own victories, even the smallest ones.

And yet we weigh our real lives against edited moments.

When I was talking to Harsh, we agreed that it’s not about ignoring other people’s success, because—inspiration is good and admiration is healthy. The actual problem starts when we stop celebrating others and instead start doubting ourselves.

That is when joy starts to slip away.

And honestly, maybe the cure is simple—hold space for both. Clap for others but also don’t let their journey erase the worth of your own, what matters most is your pace, your journey and the little wins.

Because joy doesn’t live in comparison, it lives in your authenticity, it lives in your willingness to see yourself, your life as enough, even when the world tempts you to measure it to someone else’s.

And somehow maybe that reel was right,

“Comparison is the killer of joy” but “Awareness” is the way to fight it back.

Pynshailang Lyngkhoi is a student of B.A. Journalism and Mass Communication, 2nd year, School of Media and Communication, Adamas University