At Another Person's Pace…

Most of us have had the experience of trying to follow another car too closely; and soon we learn how hazardous and difficult it is, how tense and trying, to drive at another person’s pace. To be safe and effective, we have to feel the road for ourselves.

In other things also, people are often unhappy and uncomfortable by trying too hard to proceed at another person’s pace. Critical comparisons can make men most unhappy – and the whole course of life could become frustrating and ineffective by assuming that one person should duplicate the performance of another person.

Sometimes parents make persistent comparisons between their children, and assume that one should closely follow the pattern and personality of another. But despite strong resemblances, children are usually more different than identical. We all came here different. Every man is an individual and may not choose to move in another person’s pattern.

Sometimes trying too closely to follow our neighbors’ pattern causes unhappiness and hazards – especially financial hazard. This counsel came to one young man: “Do not run faster than you have strength…” Competition is very much worth while. It improves people, it improves standards of performance. But trying to live our lives in the precise pattern of other people can be wasteful and unwise.

In the parable of the talents, the penalty imposed on the man who had one talent was not for his failure to have five but for his failure to use what he had. We are not expected to be identical with anyone else. But we are expected to be ourselves. (If we aren’t ourselves, we aren’t much of anything at all.) Nor are we expected to be perfect. But with freedom to feel the road for ourselves, we are expected to be our better selves. We are expected to be honest, to repent, to improve – and not too much repeating of our own past errors – and not trying too hard to follow another person’s pace.