Equality is unfair

Dear Reader,

I have wondered at times why some people just don’t “work hard.” I wonder why they don’t do the important things, even though they know it’s important.

I’ve experienced this mostly in guidance. Sometimes, people come to me to seek advice, and I tell them what would be a good next step, but they don’t really follow through. Then, I’m quick to level them as lazy. Maybe they are lazy, but do I truly know that? Very unlikely.

This goes back to the idea of our existence being influenced by our environment, experiences, things, and people we are exposed to. But if that is the case, which it is, equal performance or drive expectations is unfair. So is equal opportunity.

Someone whose circumstances and environment were designed to help them become a better performer will definitely do much better at a given opportunity than someone who wasn’t so fortunate. So what does that mean for us? ## #1 Prioritize context When working with someone or befriending someone, take the time to get to know them. Try to understand the context behind who they are. How did they grow up? What are their values? What are their struggles? What was their childhood like? How are their family relationships?

These are personal questions and the other person may not be open to telling you such things right away. So you’ll have to give them and yourself some time. You’ll have to work on building trust with them.

But until we know such things, we cannot know if their actions are wrong. Even if something they do seems objectively wrong, it may be the right thing to do in their context. Either way, if we had had the same experiences, exposures, and circumstances as them, we would do exactly what they are doing.

#2 Be kind to yourself

I think this happens more often than we’d like to agree; we don’t give ourselves as much credit as we deserve. We begin to compare ourselves with people who may have had much better circumstances than we do. That may not always be true, but it often is.

This doesn’t mean you just give up saying that your circumstances are messed up. You still work hard, but you show more grace to yourself. You work not with the mindset that you are not as smart as someone else, but with the mindset that maybe your circumstances made it harder. It’s fine that it happened, you cannot change that. So now you can accept that and work harder at something than the other person.

This doesn’t change the difficulty level, it will still be hard to do and achieve things, but you will be content. You won’t be miserable.

I hope this gave you something interesting to think about over the weekend. Also, I may have rambled, I hope you will forgive me for that.

I will see you next week.

Take care!

Warmly,
Suraj

If you'd like to hear more from me, here's my YouTube channel where I share lessons, experiments, tools, and resources to make life just a little better.