OPINION:
I am second. No, it’s not religious humility or self-deprecation. I’m literally second.
I am a second-born twin in the shared role of the first child. Being a twin is amazingly fun, but there is a shadow side of having a mirror identity: constant comparison.
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You might not have been born a twin, but in our current day and age, social media has created endless — what social scientists now call — mirror identities. Every time you open a social media app, there are a million ways to compare yourself. With a tap, touch, or swipe, you can instantly see someone your age, gender, ethnicity, and similar socioeconomic status seemingly have it all, while you look at your life and see nothing.
Someone graduated college when you needed an extra year. They started a company while you’re still trying to get your business model on track. They’ve started a family while you aren’t anywhere near settling down, and on and on. Social media creates a constant means of scrutinizing both success and self that, left unchecked, can develop into anger and jealousy — anger that you are not and jealousy that they are.
Have you ever thought, “I’m doing everything I should be doing but not getting what I thought I would get?”
There is nothing worse than doing what you’re supposed to do and not getting what you thought you should get. As trivial as this might seem to you, my journey is wrapped in years of wrestling with weight, eating right, working out, and not getting the results I thought I would. I found myself saying, “I’m doing everything right, so why is everything so wrong?”
When I compared my life to everyone else’s, it didn’t make sense to me. I’d open social media and watch the pretty, polished, and perfect lives of those who clearly had a way better life than what I was living. My friends — who like me, went to college, had similar upbringings, and ambitiously went after success — were living seemingly amazing lives. The dream vacation! The amazing spouse! The perfect job! As a person of faith, I must confess that it felt like all the good, all the blessings and all the favor were given to everyone else but me.
What social media has brought to the forefront is a cultural illness that has plagued us from the beginning of time. In fact, there’s a pair of twins from the Bible, Jacob and Esau, who wrestled with the same sins we do today: envy, jealousy, and strife. At the core of the twin’s relational issues was wanting what the other had — whether preferential treatment, inheritance, or blessing — and that led to manipulation, lying, and robbing of a birthright and blessing.
The beautiful end of the twin’s story is one that I want to employ into my life. The eldest brother Esau was supposed to receive the inheritance and the blessing, but his conniving twin swindled it from him. Their story included Esau begging his father for a blessing (the spiritual practice for prosperity and inheritance from God), but his father told him the prayer blessing already went to his brother. After pleading, Esau’s father was honest and proclaimed the destiny that Jacob caused. But there is one line of that prayer the father spoke over him that struck me, “But when you decide to break free, you will shake his yoke from your neck” (Genesis 27:40).
Wait. Did you catch that?
Shaking the yoke from your neck is a choice. Yes, we can decide to not live under the yoke of comparison. It’s a subtle and nuanced mindset shift. It’s not easy, but here’s the first step: believing that someone else’s blessing isn’t your curse. Someone else’s blessing doesn’t mean you don’t get one. The abundance mindset is the first step to breaking the scarcity mentality that drives comparison.
How do you know the comparison from your mirror identity isn’t a yoke on your neck anymore? When she posts on social media and you don’t squirm when you see it, the yoke is off you. When he gets the promotion at work that you wanted and you sincerely congratulate him, the yoke isn’t on you. When they advance and you can celebrate it, the yoke has broken.
Just because someone is blessed doesn’t mean you won’t be. Just because someone else has it, doesn’t mean you won’t. We live in a world where social media will make you feel like you don’t have enough, you aren’t enough, and you will never be enough. And if we don’t identify the lie, we will die by it.
The reason I’m passionate about breaking the mirror identity, is that if you don’t break the yoke, the yoke will break you. The only thing that needs to change is your decision. I’ll simply reiterate the words of Esau’s father and remind you when you DECIDE, you will SHAKE FREE. Break the comparison or the comparison will break you.
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Bianca Juarez Olthoff is a bible-teaching, word-slanging MexiRican who is passionate about raising up a generation of people passionate about Jesus Christ. As an author and speaker, she knows the power of words and wields them wisely. As a church planter and leader, she is committed to proclaiming the gospel domestically and internationally. For more information, follow along on social media or visit BiancaOlthoff.com.
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