{"id":2868,"date":"2026-07-31T16:05:52","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T23:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/?p=2868"},"modified":"2026-07-31T16:05:52","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T23:05:52","slug":"incomparable-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/31\/incomparable-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Incomparable You"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 – – – Oscar Wilde<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the most destructive things we can do is compare ourselves to other people. I do it. Not purposely. It\u2019s a bad habit. When I catch myself, I try not beat myself up about it. Instead, I focus and try to let it go. Sometimes I\u2019m successful, but when I\u2019m not, I\u2019m headed straight for the downward spiral. If I think I\u2019m better than someone else, my self-congratulatory attitude is certain to end in a swift and painful fall off the pedestal. If I think I\u2019m worse than someone else, a far more often occurrence, I feel defeated and try to claw my way back up. \u00a0<\/p>\n

I marvel at the courage of some artists demonstrate to be innovative and unusual. In 1913, when Igor Stravinsky composed the music for the ballet, \u201cThe Rite of Spring,\u201d he journeyed into a faraway realm of the unconscious, a place he had never been before, where his music was driven solely by his gut feelings. No one was ready for it. During the first performance of his new work, the audience disliked the dissonance of the music, the jerky movements of the dancers and the rapidly twittering sounds from the woodwind section. It irritated them. It didn’t sound like anything they\u2019d ever heard before and a number of them walked out of the theater, disgusted. Stravinsky stood by his rare artistic expression that didn’t compare to anyone else\u2019s and since then, \u201cThe Rite of Spring\u201d has become one of the most often recorded works in the worldwide classical repertoire.<\/p>\n

Each of us are connected as part of the human race, but we\u2019re also different. I became aware of how different we all are when I was in elementary school. There was a big snow storm, we could see it out of our school room windows, and the teacher gave us each a sheet of white paper and scissors and asked us to cut out a design for a snowflake. We folded and snipped our creations and when we were finished and unfolded them, she tacked them all onto a bulletin board. I looked at them with wonder. We had all started out with the identical white piece of paper and identical scissors, but each of us had come up with something different.<\/p>\n

Human beings are like snowflakes. Each of us is an individual expression with powerful emotions and a brand of creativity that is all our own. We have unique chemical makeup, physical health, mental
capabilities, interests and beliefs. In the words of modern dance pioneer, Martha Graham:<\/p>\n

Your expression is unique and it is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. <\/em><\/p>\n

It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.<\/em><\/p>\n

We all want to be loved and we want to love other people but the ways we find what we’re looking for are vastly different.<\/p>\n

You sit in meditation. I sit in front of a computer and write.<\/p>\n

You paint and I dance.<\/p>\n

You play the guitar and I listen to classical music.<\/p>\n

You speak Spanish and I speak English.<\/p>\n

You cook and I eat.<\/p>\n

You like to garden and I like to knit beautiful sweaters.<\/p>\n

You have a husband and children. I live alone.<\/p>\n

You like dogs. I like cats.<\/p>\n

You have a great sense of direction. I can get lost on my own street.<\/p>\n

None of the above are better or worse. They just are. I once attended what was called a \u201cchakra collage\u201d workshop. A dear friend was the leader and around the perimeter of the room were boxes filled with magazine cutouts that matched the colors of the seven chakras. Once we chose a chakra,
we rummaged through the corresponding cutouts and picked the ones we liked. The ones that spoke to us. We snipped at them, rearranged them, glued them together and although we had all chosen from the same boxes, our end results couldn\u2019t have been more different. Each was beautiful in its own way and we had fun admiring and sharing them with each other. If we had compared our pieces and thought that we had come up short, that would have been untrue and it would have opened us up to a world of pain.<\/p>\n

Spiritual leader, Iyanla Vanzant, said, \u201cComparison is an act of violence against the self.\u201d When we compare, we fold in on ourselves. Our hearts and our bodies become tight and we feel jealous. We question what we\u2019re doing and we pay no attention to our intuition. Conversely, when we see everything for the individual wonder that it is, we open up. Our hearts and our bodies expand and we feel compassion. We drop into what we\u2019re doing and we relax into the beauty that is all around us.<\/p>\n

When we compare, we reject what is actually happening in the moment. If we can stop trying to be like someone else and learn to accept ourselves, exactly like we are and exactly where we are, all that remains is beauty.<\/p>\n

Theodore Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 – – – Oscar Wilde \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2868"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2869,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868\/revisions\/2869"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}