The person you envy is not an apple

The apple felt bad, sitting in the wooden box at the market. Just hours ago it had been all happy. Happy to be picked, happy to be transported to the market, happy to soon be bought. But then this other apple came. It was lying there, looking all perfect in the other box.

Suddenly the apple felt naked. The apples in the other box were all wrapped in thin paper. Why did they have paper wrapping? The apple would have loved to be wrapped in paper too, to cover up the brown spots. Even with paper, it wouldn't have looked as good as the apple in the other box. That apple looked big and perfectly rounded, not bumpy as the unwrapped apple.

Who will ever want to buy me, when there are beautiful apples just next to me?

And sure enough, when a woman with a bubbly laughter came to the stand, she immediately picked the beautiful apple. She opened the paper to look closer. When she did, the apple almost rolled out of the box with surprise. The beautiful apple wasn't an apple. It was an orange.

That colleague / neighbour / sibling you envy and compare yourself to, is not an apple.

Whenever you compare yourself to the image you have of someone else, you will inevitably compare apples and oranges.

Care - don't compare, and be proud of your unique appleness.