The Tea Ridge | When Feeling Social Comparison

You step onto a dirt path at the top of a ridge in the Cameron Highlands.

After the lowlands, the cold is a shock.

You can see your own breath, and you take a moment to observe it.

You breathe in the cool air.

It is sharp and mineral, smelling of crushed tea leaf, wet fern, and mist.

You look down.

Tea bushes roll away in every direction, clipped into a green carpet that follows the shape of the hills.

Mist sits low in the valleys like a second sea, burning off under a pale gold sun.

You came up here with something sitting in your chest.

A feeling of dissatisfaction.

Of not getting the job, the offer, the opportunity.

Someone else is living the life you desire.

You're pleased for them, but you're also counting the disappointments.

You walk down the slope.

The clay feels firm underfoot.

You run an open palm across the tops of the bushes.

The leaves are small, crisp, and wet.

The dew soaks your hand.

Your fingers are cold.

Further along the ridge, people are working the rows, moving steadily, unhurried.

You take the top two leaves and a bud.

They'll grow back on this same slope next week, and the week after that.

Every bush here is growing at once.

None of them is taking anything from the one beside it.

There is no version of this hillside where one row thrives because another failed.