In the distant past it wasn’t so easy to be miserable by comparing yourself to others. Technology was primitive, transportation was poor, and opportunities for comparison were rather scarce. In reality, it’s only been since the second half of the twentieth century when people didn’t have to scrape by, only comparing themselves to less than twenty five people a year.

We should be grateful we’re alive today, because back then it was very, very hard to make yourself miserable.

But with the progress of human civilization we are on the brink, globally, of creating a world where everyone, regardless of socioeconomic status, has the opportunity to compare themselves to others and be miserable. Fifty years ago this was unthinkable, but now even the poorest farmer in the remotest mountain village in the developing world can login to social media and start feeling dejected by seeing what other cool stuff people around the globe are up to.

Yet despite these amazing advances, some people are still not miserable. Sadly, even in this country with its wealth of resources, there are people out there who go to bed each night feeling…..not bad at all. Some of them may be your neighbors or coworkers, people you would never in a million years guess secretly have joy in their life.

Or maybe, dear reader, you’re one of those people.

No doubt, you’ve probably had brief periods with feelings of misery, bitterness, jealousy, self-pity and a sense that the universe has wrongly passed you over in favor of others who are far less deserving. And though these times were a delicious respite from happiness, they were ultimately fleeting. Despite your best efforts, joy kept creeping back into your life. Maybe you said to yourself “I thought we were done with this! How could I, after all these years of hard work and intention, have relapsed back into being kinda happy?”

Maybe you’re losing hope that you’ll ever be consistently miserable in life. Maybe you’ve even started to compromise and tell yourself that a certain amount of enjoyment is an unavoidable part of what it means to be human. If you’ve had these thoughts then may the words I’ve written revive and refresh your tottering dream of one day becoming a nasty old curmudgeon.

I’m certainly no expert. Rather, these are words from one fellow traveler to another. Someone who, like you, is also trying to find a way to be more consistently miserable.

Comparing is the key to lifelong misery.

You could start by comparing yourself to someone younger than you. Observe their freedom, their lack of responsibility, the endless possibilities that lay before them in life. Oh if you had known then what you know now, how different things might have been! You could bemoan the youth in general, remark how “we weren’t like that back in the day.” If you’ve got extra time, take a moment to be jealous of all their energy and compare it to your own batteries which seem to be perennially near empty. Take offense to all the people and tasks that “weigh you down” and sap your vitality. Wallow in it and let it percolate throughout the day. Whatever you do, don’t be thankful for these people and tasks, otherwise you may feel a tinge of delight.

You could also compare yourself to someone the same age as you. Play “The Numbers Game”. This is a really fun game where you take your current age, then measure it against so-called “norms” for people of a similar age. It’s like the age brackets they have for marathon participants: at ages 25-29 you should be _____, at ages 30-35 you should be _____, at ages 40-44 you should be…..you get the idea.

However, maybe that won’t work. Perhaps you’ll look at those age brackets and think you stack up pretty well against your peers. That’s ok, keep trying. Being miserable requires perseverance. What if you tried comparing yourself to someone the same age who isn’t a peer but a historical figure you admire? Like Martin Luther King Jr. He basically changed the world and was an international icon before 35. That’s pretty cool, what have you been up to lately?

Or what if you compared yourself to someone older than you and started to panic a little bit? Wow, they’re only nine years older than you and look at the position they’re in in life! You’re running out of time and falling behind if you want to be where they are in the next few years.

You could also ask how they ended up in that position in the first place. This applies to comparisons of any age group. Notice all of their flaws, the many places where you are superior to them and could probably do what they’re doing, but do it even better. Massage thoughts of how they’ve arrived at their lot in life and how arbitrary it is they’ve been selected. Nurse a sense of life’s unfairness.

Then when you’ve finished, return back to those above mentioned “people and tasks” of yours and be resentful that they’ve kept you from reaching your potential. This is a really great start on your quest towards becoming miserable.

A final caveat - avoid joy at all costs. Don’t focus your energy on the people and tasks that are uniquely yours in life, but rather keep the focus outside your own reality. Dwell in the past or the future and spend most days chasing someone else’s life, not living in your own.

Again, there are many effective ways to be miserable. This is by no means meant to be an exhaustive review, as such a listing would be beyond the scope of this piece. However, hopefully there’s some nuggets in here for you to mull over before you put them into practice. Remember, death by comparison is slow work, but don’t fret, you’ll get there in time if you keep at it.

Death By Comparison