A note on humility and compassion

Some things in life are within our control. Others are outside it.

We usually try to work positively on the things we can control. And sometimes, that leads to the outcome we expected.

So it’s tempting to conclude that where someone ends up tells you how well they played.

Imagine that life is a game.

You can work hard and do better, or you can have a lot of persistence and do better.

Picture them as dials on a machine: Discipline, Hard work, Working smart, Persistence.

Assume a capitalist society, where your score is a proxy for your economic status.

You turn a dial, watch the counter on top, and turn again.

Over time, you learn how to play. You settle on a combination that produces a pretty good score.

Then you look around. Some people score higher, some lower. And naturally, you start to judge.

The high scorers must have figured something out. The low scorers probably didn’t turn their dials quite right.

But here’s the catch.

What if the machine never had just four dials?

Perhaps there are a hundred. The other ninety-six are things you inherited, people who helped you, opportunities you happened to notice, and events that happened without your permission.

Your score reduces all of this complexity to a single number.

Looking at it, it’s sometimes hard to know how much of it came from your own work.

For me, this is a reason for humility. All my effort goes into optimizing the few parameters within my control. That effort is real.

But how much credit do I truly deserve for the score?

It’s also an avenue for compassion. When I see someone whose score is lower than mine, I’m only seeing their counter.

I don’t know which dials they were handed, which ones they could turn, or how far their choices could ever move the number.