“In the Jesuits we have an expression, ‘Compare and despair.’ If you compare yourself to someone else, you usually focus on your own mixed bag of good and bad experiences. My life was a mixture of the good (‘I’m doing well in school, have a lot of friends, and am healthy’) and the bad (‘I stink at baseball, am lousy at basketball, and just failed my driver’s test’). But we tend to compare that with what we see as the other person’s perfect life (‘He has a Camaro!’), forgetting that everyone’s life is a mixed bag. So when you compare your own mixed-bag life with what you falsely perceive as the other person’s perfect life, yours always loses out. It’s a rigged game, as an older Jesuit once said. The key is recognizing that everyone’s life is a mix of good and bad. But it would take me years to realize that.”