He came in, sprinkled with merriment.
I split in two, hacked by wild despair,
and shouted to him—“Fine, I’ll go; yours will stay.”
Oh, that night—
at my cry and terror the face
of the room was mown down with horror.
1916 — Vladimir Mayakovsky “The Backbone Flute”
This scream is not about jealousy alone. It is the moment when presence turns into measure, when another’s light makes your own life collapse into shadow. Mayakovsky captured the split, the physical rift that happens the instant comparison enters the room.
From here the descent begins. Cain’s cry was the same: not against his brother, but against the ruler placed between them. And since that first wound, we live inside this hell—where every step, every word, every touch is weighed, ranked, compared.
He didn’t scream because he wanted blood. He screamed because, in one instant, he knew: his breath had turned empty next to his brother’s breath. “This offering is pleasing,” “that one is not”—and everything alive in him clenched. It wasn’t Abel who hurt him; it was the measuring stick that slid between them like a finger between teeth. From that scream our hell begins.
You enter a room—and the air turns sharp. A look runs over you like a tape over fabric: height, shoulders, step. Your shoulders go wooden, your neck leans forward, your breathing breaks into short cuts. You’re no longer walking; you’re taking a walking exam. The body stops being a body and becomes a scoreboard. No one says a word, but you hear the grades as clearly as if they were written on your skin with a marker.
You open your mouth—and even before sound, your voice is placed on the scales. Louder? Softer? Cleaner? Rougher? You wanted to say what is; instead you walk into an exam. Dry throat, a crack on the second sentence, an extra “uh.” Speech is fixed as a result: “persuaded / didn’t persuade.” It’s not thought that passes, but tone. Not meaning, but a score. When you fall silent, even silence gets measured: “confident” or “kept quiet.”
You love—and where there should be only closeness and warmth, a garden rises. Exupéry knew this place: while a rose is alone, it’s a fact; the moment there are hundreds, yours becomes comparable. A kiss turns into balance: your hand against many hands, your scent against many scents. You don’t lean in—you prove you are “enough.” The heart beats not to live, but to pass inspection.
You work—and joy instantly becomes a chart. Sweat runs down your back, palms slip, eyes tire, and at the end—your slot in a table. “Better than yesterday,” “below theirs.” A win doesn’t have time to become yours: it’s put in a cell. A loss gets a diagonal and a color. You look at your fatigue and see not fatigue, but a scale. This is hell: when even joy has no weight without a mark.
He came in—“sprinkled with cheer”—and the room warped. Mayakovsky caught this second exactly: you split in two, and the room itself “was mown with horror.” He didn’t slash you—measure did. Next to his light, yours is fixed as shadow. This isn’t jealousy in the everyday sense; it’s the impossibility of bearing that you are being read through another. And you, like the one who “hacked up by wild despair,” say words you didn’t mean—because there is no speech now, only an attempt to reclaim a place.
Jealousy is when a third stands between you—absent, yet burning your skin. You sit across and feel it to the bone: it says nothing, and everything already is “worse / better.” Infidelity is when this scale is sealed by a choice. It hurts not because you were left; it hurts because you were suddenly assigned the row “second.” The blow lands in the gut—cold and clean as metal. What wounds is not the absence of a person; it’s the sentence.
You create—and warm, still-living paint already gets a tag: “like X,” “weaker than Y.” The song hasn’t ended and it’s placed “between” someone and someone. Art stops being an event—it becomes a heat. You continue because you must, but inside you hear the stopwatch click.
“To outgrow yourself” sounds like freedom and works like the same mechanism doubled. You split into the former and the current. The former must be smaller, the current bigger. The same ruler, only turned inward. You drive yourself, compare yourself to yourself, and can’t coincide. You even measure rest: who rested “better.” You even measure silence by its length.
“We raise children whole,” they say. Underneath: grade books, points, “development norms,” contests. The words are soft, the packaging velvety, but the principle is the same: “you’re not worse.” A child brings a drawing and hears: “good job—almost like Masha’s.” He brings quiet and gets: “be braver.” We teach him to speak and judge by loudness. We teach him to be himself and lay him on the scale at once. He learns: without comparison I’m not visible.
Sometimes the body won’t agree. You hear “you’re not worse,” and anger rises. Not a pose, not a wish to argue—pure refusal. Throat burning, shoulders concrete, fingers cold. This isn’t pathology. This isn’t a “quirk.” It’s the healthy part of you that won’t let you vanish into the line. It screams like Cain screamed. If that scream frightens, it’s because it enters where silence is the norm.
Society rests on comparisons—sales, ratings, elections, queues. We’re so used to it we don’t see it. As fish don’t see water, we don’t see the ruler. So the softer phrases slip through filters: “you’re not worse,” “not falling behind,” “no worse than the rest.” They sound like support and work like a measured choking. Not blunt trauma that you block—slow normality you live in for years, used to a dry throat.
You try “I = I.” It matters. It burns a hole in the wall for a second. But the phrase is born inside the scale. If the ruler didn’t exist, you wouldn’t need to state equality. You shout—so you answer a charge already spoken. And you’re compared at once by the force of the shout.
Cain and Abel stay with us not as a tale but as a way to see the source. Not favor and disfavor as such, but that the choice was made so one became the measure of the other. That is the first pain. Since then we repeat it in everyday forms: an interview, a date, a report, a feed, a dinner with parents. Everywhere the same thing: you are visible only through another.
Art holds the mirror at skin height. Mayakovsky showed how another’s presence bends a room. Exupéry—how the many erases the singular. The Bible—how a ruler stands between brothers. Strip the high words and one thing remains: the body can’t bear being turned into numbers.
What to do? No instructions fit here. Any “practice” quickly becomes another ranking—“who released comparison better.” Any “right” scheme—another ruler. It’s a trap; it will close again. You can only see the place where the throat dries and speak from there. Not smarter, not fiercer—just straight. The moment you hear “not worse,” say: “put the ruler away.” Sometimes that will break the talk. Often—yes. But it gives air back.
At times you’re the one who measures. Not out of malice—out of the fatigue of living without a prop. You want to know where you are and press another to yourself as a rule. Catch your hand in that act. It’s always bodily: back tightens, jaw clenches, gaze turns into a counter. In that instant you can pull the ruler from your own hand. Not to edify someone—so you don’t spend one more day in the exchange of “better / worse.”
Sometimes the ruler goes deep and you start living as a project. Morning as a task, body as a set of muscles, relationships as KPIs. You tick boxes, then wonder why it’s empty. It’s empty because the boxes erased a face. On such days do something that can’t be compared. A silly drawing. A useless walk. A call to someone you don’t need to “prove” yourself to. Not because it “heals,” but because it can’t be turned into numbers. Not about success; about giving weight back to breath.
Comparison will never vanish from the world. Science is built on distinctions. Language is made of oppositions. But one thing is to distinguish; another is to rank. Distinction gives form; ranking steals air. Distinction can honor the fact: “this is this.” Ranking always hits the body: “worse / better.” The line is thin, but you feel it at once: in the first case you breathe, in the second you stumble over your own ribcage.
And still—the main place remains where you first heard “you’re not worse” and couldn’t swallow it. Let that impossibility stay. Let it cut at the entrance. Let it spoil evenings where people like to speak softly. It’s not a whim. It’s a signal you haven’t agreed to disappear.
Someday you’ll walk into a room again, and you’ll want to square your back under someone’s eyes. In that moment one brief move is possible: remember your body isn’t a scoreboard. Not a slogan, not a report, not a chart. It’s a neck that turns to look straight. It’s breath that owes no “deeper than.” It’s a voice that doesn’t take an exam. It’s a hand that doesn’t compete with a garden.
He screamed because they converted him into a number. That scream still sounds inside every casual “not worse.” Hearing it hurts. Not hearing it leaves nothing to live on. And after that—only air in the chest, one breath, without evaluation, without a mark, without another’s measure—and…
Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) — Russian poet and playwright, a leader of Futurism. Author of A Cloud in Trousers (1915), The Backbone Flute (1916), The Bedbug (1929). On April 14, 1930, he took his own life in Moscow.