A Kindred Spirit

"He could measure his own progress only in relationship to others, and his idea of excellence was to do something at least as well as all the men his own age who were doing the same thing even better. The fact that there were thousands of men his own age and older who had not even attained the rank of major enlivened him with foppish delight in his own remarkable worth; on the other hand, the fact that there were men of this own age and younger who were already generals contaminated him with an agonizing sense of failure and made him gnaw at his fingernails with an unappeasable anxiety that was even more intense than Hungry Joe's."

Heller, Joseph (1955). Catch-22: Colonel Cathcart. New York: Simon and Schuster.

As soon as I read the above quote something clicked and my brain shouted, "That's me!" Regardless of what I've achieved thus far in my life, I'm always comparing myself to others. Whenever I read an article or hear a story about how some 22 year-old has received his/her B.A., M.A., and PhD and spent the past year and a half volunteering overseas doing work on foreign affairs, etc, I can't help but feel like a failure (they could be 25, you get the drift). Then I look at other people and see that I'm in pretty good shape comparatively. So it goes that my self-esteem reads a bit like an alpha-wave, with many various peaks and valleys of relatively uniform shape.

Having been told my whole life that I will excel at anything I do, I feel a certain need be an over-achiever. I need to live up to my "high earning potential." I need to prove myself better than average. I need to be smarter, leaner, fitter, more aware, etc., than the average person. And so, today, I feel a bit like Colonel Cathcart.