Why do I keep comparing my life to my friends'?
A school friend buys an apartment. Another receives a promotion. A third has a baby and appears composed, while your own life remains unchanged that week and feels smaller. By Friday you are measuring.
A ladder with no top
Plutarch identified this habit as the tendency to compare ourselves with those who are better off. He described it as a ladder:
"those who are in chains think those happy who are freed from their chains, and they again freemen, and freemen citizens, and they again the rich, and the rich satraps, and satraps kings, and kings the gods"
— Plutarch, On Contentedness of Mind, Sec. X, tr. A. R. Shilleto, 1888
The king also measures himself against someone higher. There is no final rung.
The direction of the gaze
If even a king compares, the issue is not what is lacking. It is where the gaze is directed. Friends are convenient benchmarks because they are close and often one step ahead. You do not compare yourself to a billionaire; you compare yourself to the person who sat next to you at nineteen. Plutarch noted that we are "accustomed to live more with an eye to others than ourselves."
The feeling that nothing is ever enough has its own page, and envying people with simple lives is on another one. There the measure is internal or below. Here, it stands directly beside you.
The chosen measure
Plutarch does not claim the comparison is false. He demonstrates that it does not stop on its own. Whose life did I choose as the measure of my own, and when did that happen?
Epimelea is an app built around the existential school. The conversation carries over from one meeting to the next. The archive is encrypted on the device and belongs to the person who wrote it.
About the app: an AI therapist for long-term therapy
This page is about a school of psychotherapy. It is not medical advice and not emergency help. If you are in danger right now, contact your local emergency number, or find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.