The bane that is the benchmark

This was an essay I wrote for the following prompt:

Name one concept, idea, or invention that the world would be better off without and tell us why.

Certainly, the concept of a universal benchmark!  Let me explain.

Which of these is the coldest? Melted wax, campfire or lava? What is cold? It is simply the absence of heat. It is relative, because there is no ‘line’ that demarcates cold from hot. Everything in the world is relative and nothing is absolute. Also, which is the fastest, a fish, an eagle or a rabbit? It depends on where they are racing. There can be no absolute decision. When nothing is absolute, I do not see the point in taking these comparisons as seriously as we do.

Just as Usain Bolt’s speed can’t be compared with Michael Phelps’, neither can the ability / worth of any two people or organizations. They can only be contrasted if they have had the exact same opportunities, skill sets and preferences, and this is extremely rare. Therefore, there is no point in agonizing over whether someone is doing better than you.  It is far wiser to gauge your progress by comparing yourself to your own past performance and potential.

Mark Twain famously said, ‘Comparison is the death of joy’. So are benchmarks. A benchmark causes unnecessary pressure and discontent. People feel insecure because they are too short, or fat, or not rich enough, or good enough at something. A man who loses a kilogram in a week may feel upset that his neighbor lost two, and the ‘ideal weight’ is still twenty kilograms away. Why compare at all when, in reality, the two individuals’ bodies are different, and are not designed to lose weight at the same rate.  All that ought to matter is that the person was healthier than he was one week ago.

As a student, I know the pressures that my peers feel. I have seen friends become severely discouraged and demoralized simply because they did badly in an exam. Their worth was being gauged by comparing their grades vis-à-vis another’s. Why does it occur to people that they can use such a small parameter to gauge success and generalize the results? To quote Albert Einstein, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”.

I dream of a world without a universal yardstick, where people are judged only on how far they have come from where they were. There, goals would be set sensibly taking their context into account, and progress measured only against these goals. You are your best and only touchstone, and your primary objective should be to continuously be better than yourself, not some external benchmark.