I think comparison can be accompanied by misery but I don’t think it’s inevitable. I don’t know if it’s possible to go your whole life and not compare yourself to anyone, ever, on any metric. Some people are better than I am at some things, and I learn by comparing myself to them. I think the trick is to not condense it all down into a single spectrum. I mean that for broad moral judgements (e.g. “I am a better person than my boss”) as well as in particular domains (“My co-worker is a worse coder than I am”). I think that type of quick judgement can always be peeled apart and analyzed, and learned from, and I think that resolves a lot of the tension that typically comes from comparison.