Comparison as Suicide

Without even mentioning the countless ways that I use it to boost my ego, here are a few personal examples of the destructive nature of comparison...

LIES
Why bother playing music at all when I will never be the type of band leader that Andrew Lee or Jeffy Mettlewsky is?

Maybe I'll write a book, someday? But I would never want people like Thea and Steve Watts to read my amateur crap, though.

I love to play hockey, but not as much as I would love it if I were as good as my brother.

Justin is the funnier one, I should probably just shut my mouth.

If I knew what Kenton knew, life would be smoother.

TRUTHS:
"No man is smart, except by comparison to those who know less."
Edgar Watson Howe

"For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise."
2 Corinthians 10:12

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841