He answers, “Definitely not.”

She keeps studying him and says again, “I can tell you are Jewish.”

In order to get her to stop annoying him the gentleman replies, “Okay, I’m Jewish.”

She looks at him and shakes her head back and forth, and says, “You don’t look it.”

That’s how things are. You as me, “How can I be myself?” Just drop the pretensions, just drop this urge to be somebody else, just drop this desire to look like Christ, Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, to look like your neighbor. Drop competition and drop comparison and you will be yourself. Comparison is the poison. You are always thinking in terms of how the other is doing. He has got a big house and a big car and you are miserable. He has got a beautiful woman and you are miserable. And he is climbing up on the staircase of power and politics and you are miserable. Compare, and you will imitate. If you compare yourself with the rich people, you will start running in the same direction. If you compare yourself with the learned people, you will start accumulating knowledge. If you compare yourself with the so-called saints, you will start accumulating virtue – and you will be imitative. And to be imitative is to miss the whole opportunity to be oneself.

Drop comparison. You are unique. Nobody else is like you, nobody else has ever been like you, and nobody else is ever going to be like you. You are simply unique – and when I am saying you are unique, I am not saying you are better than others, remember. I am simply saying they are also unique. To be unique is an ordinary quality of every being. To be unique is not a comparison, to be unique is as natural as breathing. Everybody is breathing and everybody is unique. While you are alive, you are unique. Only corpses are all alike; alive persons are unique. They are never similar – they cannot be. Life never follows any repetitive course. God never repeats: he goes on singing a new song every day, he paints something new every day.

Respect your uniqueness, and drop comparison. Comparison is the culprit. Once you compare, you are on the track. Don’t compare with anybody – he is not you, you are not he. You are going to be yourself, he is going to be himself: let him be, and you relax into your being. Start enjoying whatsoever you are. Delight in the moments that are available to you. Comparison brings future, comparison brings ambition, and comparison brings violence. You start fighting, struggling, you become hostile.