When You Trust, There’s No Need to Compare

When your perspective widens out from your self, your family, your community, your nation, your tradition, your race, your continent, your species, to all that is, and you accept your place in being, no more, no less, you trust that all that is to come to you will come to you, in time; and there is no need to compare yourself to the life of another, for you trust that they, too, will receive all that is theirs in this life. That’s the “order of things” as seen by the rabbi Ben Azai. Here is one of his sayings, one that reminds us that it is fear of loss and anxiety about not getting what we really need that makes us feel unhappy and compare ourselves to others, whom we think are receiving honors, land, goods, love that we should be receiving, now.

Ben Azai said:
You will be called by your name,
You will be seated in your place,
You will be given what is yours.
No one touches what is meant for another.
No kingdom touches its neighbor by so much as a hairsbreadth.
Hammer on the Rock: A Midrash Reader, p. 17 (a collection of sayings from the Talmud)