‘Why can’t you sit still like your cousin?!’ my mum scolded me at one of the family gatherings.
Looking back, I thought about the phrase ‘like your cousin’. She could have just said, ‘Why can’t you sit still?’ But by bringing my cousin into the picture, she was implying that my cousin was doing better than me in terms of manners, therefore I should be ashamed of myself.
Even though I didn’t know it at the time, that was the beginning of my being aware of how I was doing compared to others of my age. My parents and my relatives encouraged this. They saw comparison with others as a good thing, a strong motivator to do well in studies, manners and other aspects of life. Three cheers for Team Comparers.
‘Without gauging how you are doing compared to your peers, how will you know how well you are doing?’ my Dad said to me, all too many times.
‘Look at Khin. She is quiet, talks in a low voice and studies all the time,’ said my mum pointing at one of my classmates she thought had all the manners of a proper young lady. ‘That’s the sort of girl you should compare yourself to.’
This is one technique my parents used frequently to make me grow up to be a successful adult. And they are not unique in that. I witnessed my friends’ parents doing the same thing.
The parents’ goal is simple. They want their children to emulate the group who seem to have it all.
This technique enjoys quite a high success rate. A lot of these children grow up to do well in life materialistically. They earn a good income, marry well and seem to be having a reasonable lifestyle. So, the first question when friends meet each other again is ‘How much are you earning?’ Nobody asks, ‘Are you happy with your job?’ It looks like everyone (including me) suffers from what I would call Obsessive Comparison Disorder.
It seems there is a life blueprint for everyone born into a Burmese middle and upper class.
Age 1 to 5:
Be carefree and play. But around the age of 4, you’ll be sent to attend classes for Maths and English so that you can get ahead at school when you attend at age 5.
Age 5 to 16:
Study, study, study. Obey parents. Study some more. Your life comprises of rushing back from school just in time for extra private classes that will help you get ahead at school or at least catch up with the class. Being a nerd and always studying is a virtue. Your friends will admire you and your parents will be so proud of the fact that you are so studious to the point of being a nerd. All this is designed to make sure you fare well or better than your friends.
Age 17 to 25:
Join a top university, preferably abroad. Get a top profession that pays well, get into a top job or start your own business and work hard while keeping an eye on how you are doing compared to your peers.
Age 25 to 30:
Work at getting ahead in your career. Keep checking how friends are doing. Find someone to marry. If you are a girl, make sure he is at least richer than you, otherwise you’ll look dumb.
Age 30 to 40:
Keep working at your career, especially if you are a man. If you are a woman, you can get away with not being overly ambitious career-wise, especially if you’ve got a financially stable husband (which you should have if you aren’t dim-witted). You can raise children. If a woman is still not married after the age of 30, she must be too ugly or too weird or too choosy or too something. Men are luckier in that sense. They can still go on unmarried till their early 40s before they start to look like they are weird or gay.
Age 40 to 60:
Raise kids and push them to do better than their friends. Climb the career or business ladder religiously and establish a household. During this time you may encounter a midlife crisis. You may realize that you have married the world’s most annoying idiot and start to think about divorce. But then you already have children with this idiot, so you may decide to grin and bear it, hoping someone else might appear in your life to save you from the cage. But more often than not, no one comes. On a more optimistic scenario, you may still realize that you have married an idiot, but at least it’s an idiot that you know well, and you do love them a lot of the time, so you are just going to stick with them and not rock the boat and give the children a stable home. The chances of you not thinking your marriage partner is an idiot are quite slim. It could happen. But it’s rare. It’s also extremely rare that the idiot is actually you. It’s always the other party. Other unfortunate things (such as the loss of parents, lawsuits, engaging in too much retail therapy) tend to happen at this age. From time to time, you think about running away to a faraway secluded place free of the turmoil and become a monk or a nun. But you never get around to implementing it. There is always one more thing to achieve before you can do such a thing.
Age 60 onwards:
Children have grown up. Not only do you need to look at friends for how well they are doing, but you also need to look at how their offspring are doing compared to yours. While fulfilling this double duty, make frequent visits to monasteries to start preparing for your inevitable terminal illness and eventual death. You need to start getting on the good side of Buddha by saying prayers regularly, donating to pagodas and monks. By this time, you will have been preached to a lot about the meaninglessness of life. You realize the meaninglessness of Obsessive Comparison Disorder running through society. But you can’t help doing it at this stage because you have done it all your life. It has become such a part of your identity that you don’t know how to live without it. So, you continue to compare and compare. You even compare how much sooner your friends go and you are still here. You thank your lucky stars for being luckier than your friends who are already gone. By this time, you are too old or too frail to go into a secluded place and become a monk. What if you fell ill while alone in the middle of nowhere?
This is a very solid blueprint for a modern human to have materialistic success. This works very well in the Burmese society that I grew up in, and no doubt it works in any society of the world. After all, Obsessive Comparison Disorder is universal around the globe.
The real problem is when you look for a blueprint for emotional success such as contentment and happiness, there doesn’t seem to be any.
As I complained about this lack, a voice replied, ‘What happiness?’ ‘Don’t be a dreamer’ my mum added. Frustrated with my perceived slow progress, my dad shouted, ‘Look how much better your cousin is doing now! Stop wasting time dreaming.’
That still echoes in my head. Maybe I’m still a member of Team Comparers after all.