Comparison; Thief of Joy or Perspective Shifter

I spend a bit of time on a forum where connoisseurs & owners of items from the cheapest to the most expensive all congregate. Naturally, the most expensive & best stuff gets the lions share of the attention. This place also bills itself as sort of a judgement free zone and to a degree, it’s true. A lot (most?) of the personal attacks you see on other social sites either don’t happen, or are algorithmically punted into the ether.

However, some people seem to think judgement free means everyone must like the content everyone posts.

As a person who has made quite a few suboptimal choices in my life as it relates to my career & finances, I will never be able to afford to play in the area where I will be able to own even one of the items in the higher tiers of the hobby. For awhile, I thought I would be able to and then realized I would not and got a little depressed about it. In comparing my life to that of others, I was robbing myself of the joy of being able to appreciate what I did have.

Today, someone bemoaned the fact that his posts about new acquisitions from the lower tiers were not getting the engagement from the community that he felt was warranted. He was expecting to have similar engagement to someone that posts an item that everyone wants.

And I’m sort of forced to compare myself to them. We both sort of play in the same general area of the hobby & we’ll both probably never own one of those items most people in the hobby really respect. But for me, I just say all I need is one person to like or comment on my post and I’ll feel validated. But he gets 2 or three likes and feels like he’s being persecuted. He’s obviously got some mental health issues, just like I’m sure I do. But at least I don’t care about strangers liking or not liking my posted content about a hobby we choose to participate in. Comparison brought me contentment with my current situation.

So what does comparison bring you? Theft of joy? Validation that maybe you’re not doing as bad as you maybe think you are?