Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Hating the Better

Maybe it's the fact that I'm superior to others in almost every way, (don't worry, we cover pride in the next round of posts) but I have a particular distaste for the human characteristic that causes us to despise those that are better than we are.

I mean "better" here in a very broad, but objective sense. This past season, the Boston Red Sox were a better baseball team than my cherished Cleveland Indians, who in turn were better than the New York Yankees. By measure of grades, I was a better student than most at my university. Someone who received similar marks at Harvard was probably a better student than me. I think you can see where I'm going.

The point is, that there are always people who have accomplished something others of us want to and haven't. It may be because of a difference in talent, or effort, or just time, but someone is on that pedestal that we want for our own.

But I think that the proper moral line has to be drawn somewhere between ambition and envy. It's good to want to accomplish great things, and even to desire good things, spiritual and material, for oneself. What has never made sense to me, though, is the wishing of ill will toward those that are ahead of us in the race, or higher up the ladder, or whatever metaphor you want to use. (C. S. Lewis would've written this better than I am.) Why should it upset us that someone else simply did what we ourselves are trying to do? Why should we want to take someone's success from them when we'd lay hold of it ourselves given half the chance?

So what is the right reaction to someone else's success, then? In my world, for what that's worth, it's congratulations. Then it's on to taking the lessons that person has to offer and making ourselves better. A good rule of thumb, too, is to know who to learn your lessons from. Very often the ones who set themselves up as teachers are those least qualified, those who haven't walked the path themselves. It seems obvious to me that the best route to where someone is standing is the road they've taken, but too often we follow those who don't "do," but instead criticize. And in the end, aren't I better off that way, by trying to eclipse those who have done well before me, than I am sitting where I am while trying to tear them down?