There is a particular kind of sadness in realizing that someone else’s life has become the ruler with which you are measuring your own. You hear that a friend has found love, that someone you once studied with has a better job, that a person younger than you has bought a big house you have been hoping to buy for years. Nothing has actually been taken from you. And yet, for a moment, your own life seems to have become smaller.
We rarely know what to do with that feeling. We tell ourselves to work harder. To catch up. To become more successful, more beautiful, more accomplished, more certain. But there is always another person ahead, another life that seems fuller from a distance, another measure by which we can decide that we are somehow falling short.
