its funny, people measure themselves only in relation to others. for example, you can't say "im good at basketball" without mentally referencing a pre-conceived person that you are so-called "better than". You can't be just "good" - you have to be better than the imaginative "Person B". it's simply a race - you must be better, stronger, faster, more athletic, better at reading, better at memorizing definitions. you try to be come "something". individual DIFFERENCES are all that we see.

"we only see others as separate from ourselves in the ways in which they are separate. and one of the dramatic characteristics of experience is being with another person and suddenly seeing the ways in which they are like you, and experiencing the fact - that which is essence in you and which is essence in me is indeed one. the understanding that there is no other" - Richard Alpert