[Rivière]

What you've said is quite true, and remarkably so.

I often get compared with my brother. When I was younger, he was always doing X thing better. I was being lazy. I was doing this wrong. I was doing this differently to him. My family preferred Y thing he did over me. Now, with my family dynamic changed, it's the opposite. However it's in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable. My mother compares me with him, 'I wish your brother was more like you' 'I wish your brother behaved like that'. The problem with comparisons, especially by parents, is that they have no idea how damaging they can be, regardless of what's said.

Comparisons between family especially, are often made as the parent wants to see their ideal child. They want the perfect child. They want the better child than somebody else's child. They compare their child to someone else's child. So if their child doesn't do as well as they had wanted, sometimes they can push them down and make them feel belittled, ashamed, treated like a failure. They try to use such words to make their child do better in certain fields of work. However their behaviour is damaging and only makes the child perform worse.

You're right in what you say. We don't have to be perfect. We should do what we enjoy doing. I think it's natural that we want to make our parents happy and pleased with us. I know I often do things to gain approval from my mother, though less so these days. I realised some time ago that we can never truly make a person happy with us. They're always going to find some way to put us down or be displeased with us. As that saying goes, you do you.