Nobility

"The truth is that there is nothing noble in being superior to somebody else. The only real nobility is in being superior to your former self."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our ego is always searching for a way that we can be superior to someone else. That is the only way it can live and grow, and it is terrified of death. That is why we would rather be "right" than happy. We defend our beleifs to the end, even when they are not supportive to our own happiness. We make up reasons why we must be better than others, even if they are as trivial as our skin color. There was a fascinating lesson with striking results that a teacher did once by seperating the class into two groups based on eye color and saying that brown eyed people were better for a period of time, and then saying that blue eyed people were better for a period of time. My ego loves to hear that I am better than you, and any reason will do. But there is no nobility in that stance.

Since we are all children of God, none of us are better than the others, any more than blue eyed people are actually better than brown eyed people. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and we're much more alike than we are different. So there's no point in comparing yourself with someone else "for there will always be greater and lesser people than yourself" (from Desiderata)in any given trait.

The only relevant person to compare yourself to is yourself, as you were in the past. The only relevant measurement of success, or acheivement or even happiness, is whether you are better now than you used to be, in whatever way you are measuring. To have improved upon yourself is the only real nobility.

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