What is comparison? It is the root of all evil and the petty principle by which the ego manages to separate and set against one another everything that should be one.
It is the attempt to measure one person’s worth against the value assigned to another: against their “beauty,” status, wealth, popularity, and so on.
Any of these measures can justify a fierce and illusory competition. All for the sake of reaching some summit from which to look down on others. To conquer a lonely place where no flowers grow.
Obsessed with a position that prevents them from perceiving any form of love. How could you love that which you are striking, ruler in hand?
It is blindness and emptiness. An absurd senselessness.
They amass fortunes and have no one with whom to enjoy them; or those who gather around them never do so because of the person they are, because of who they truly are, but merely because of appearances and the status that comes from standing beside them. Ultimately, because of a vain illusion.
As the saying goes, “Birds of a feather flock together.” Emptiness seeks emptiness. Appearance seeks appearance. Then comes a string of laments from those who never looked in the mirror to discover what they themselves were offering.
It is not that those who live in that dark place have nothing to give, but that the giant of pride is trampling them, and their hands are busy defending themselves.
They condemn themselves and deprive themselves of real love: the kind that looks beyond appearances, beyond what is empty and insubstantial.