Do you compare yourself? To whom?

In grade school, I compared myself to classmates. On balance, the comparison satisfied. Others were more athletic, more amply supplied with muscles and/or armpit hair (I was young for my class), but my grades were good, grown-ups praised me, I played tennis and the piano. Envy, yes – of the manly stuff especially – but no anguish that I recall.

In college I envied swarthy Lotharios with co-eds in tow. (Co-ed – does anyone use that quaint locution anymore?) My grades were still good, but I had no aptitude for romance.

In the journalism and business worlds, comparisons were “odorous,” in Shakespeare’s delectable malapropism. (Malapropism, in the foregoing, is anachronistic, I concede, but circa 1600 was there a term for such a jest?) How I longed to top my publishing and entrepreneurial trees – writhed! – but I also wrote – in private pages – explaining to myself why my path was no less worthy. (The only way to be a big fish is to right-size your pond.)

In the harness of career, I was too busy hauling to compare, just doing what I could to get ahead. In tennis I yearned to beat better players – but not that much better. Once I beat a player way better than I – I have no idea how. I am still aglow.

Retirement inclines us to assess, if we can bear it. Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot are retirees – that is, previously employed – jawing to while the time. Vladimir chides his chum for overreach, comparing himself to Christ, but Estragon’s unfazed. Of course, he compares himself to Christ – shouldn’t we all? – isn’t that the Christian project?

Rome, where Jane and I spent the first four years of our retirement, crazes you with comparisons. Saints and heroes abound – and so many revered visitors to the Eternal City. Out our window I could see Henry James ambling to the Pincio, and Hawthorne and Emerson and Berlioz and Santayana and Michelangelo and Robert Browning and Robert Lowell and so many others my ego dwindled to a pimple. How dare I join my voice to such a chorus! But mustn’t they have felt the same, feeble and futile in the shadow of giants? – look, isn’t that Virgil over by the Aqueduct – and Ovid! – and Horace! – and Edward Gibbon!…

These days I compare myself to anybody I revere – Shakespeare, Jesus, Saint Francis, Thoreau – not competitively, but curiously. They move me – not to resemble them but be my best; not to regret my inferiority but revel in my opportunity. How few of my idols, if any, saw themselves as successful? Virgil on his deathbed wanted his Aeneid destroyed, it wasn’t good enough. Who can doubt Shakespeare moaned?

The spectacle of history distresses. Current events suggest humanity, notwithstanding increases in our knowledge and acuity, isn’t improving but slip-sliding to extinction sooner than we foresee. Reading headlines, who can rate the human experiment a success?

Reading – and hearing – and viewing the glorious bequests of forbears suffuses me with hope and soothes my soul. I’m proud to be of the species that made the Sistine ceiling and King Lear and while I’ll never rival those achievements what a privilege to exhaust myself trying! None of us, even the mightiest, amount to much, pipsqueaks beside our dreams; but what wonders we’ve achieved together, and what a joy to strive!

Friends ask if I’m happy. I have two answers. How can I be – observing the vileness that surrounds? And, How can I not be – marveling at all we’ve made so far?