Arrogance that stems from spiritual accomplishment is much harder to cure than arrogance because of physical advantages. A spiritually successful person might feel superior to those around him. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thinks, “Look at how great I am! I do so many mitzvos, I learn all day, I dress like a Ben Torah, and I keep these chumros. Everyone else I know doesn’t come close to what I am doing. And even if some people do more than me, that guy doesn’t, so I am much greater than him. Those are the facts!” Solving this type of arrogance requires a much deeper understanding of life.
This attitude is completely mistaken. The person is comparing himself to others, which is illogical for many reasons.
First, our entire nation is one unit with a common goal of serving Hashem. Life is not a game of who can be better and put others down. We are all on one team. If we do well and others don’t, it shouldn’t make us happy.
Every Jew’s greatest wish must be that our entire nation serves Hashem properly. That will bring Hashem the utmost satisfaction because He will be able to reward everyone, and it will bring us joy because all our brothers and sisters will be happy.
We must internalize that our whole nation is on our side and is part of “us.” The yetzer hara loves to create conflict and destroy our unity. Unfortunately, many times in our history, anti-Semitism reminded us who is the “us” and who is the “them.” We are all one family. Our goal is to serve Hashem together, not at the expense of other Jews to be higher than them or to put them down.
There is another reason we shouldn’t compare ourselves to others. We have learned (Chapter 23) that we are not judged based on our outward accomplishments and errors. Rather, we are judged based on what we did with the talent and challenges we were given. Clearly, comparing ourselves to others is just plain foolish! How can we know what anyone’s life is like? How do we know what each person’s challenges are?
Every person is given a different life-setting with distinct challenges. How do we know what life would be like had we been born a little less smart? How well would we do had Hashem created us with less natural motivation to do the right thing? What if we were born with bad character traits? What if we never tasted any success or were social outcasts? What if we had different friends or tough challenges when we were younger? What if we had gone to a less religious school? What if we had gone to a school that was rigid and strict? What if we didn’t enjoy learning and found it boring? What if we had been born into a family or society that cared only about the wrong things? Wouldn’t things have been different?
How can we compare ourselves to others? Do we really understand what is going on? It is impossible for us to know. We are incapable of saying that we would do better than any person — or even that we wouldn’t do worse — had we been created exactly like him, with his personality, desires, inborn values, and situation in life. It makes no sense to feel superior to anyone, no matter how great we become, because we just don’t know.
Hashem gave us the perfect life-setting for us. Had He tweaked it a bit, life would be a lot different. Each person receives his own set of challenges that were set up exactly for him. Each person has his unique role and mission to accomplish. It’s almost as if he is in his own world. Comparing people is foolish.
Of course, when we succeed, we should feel great about ourselves. We should be thrilled that we have acquired eternity! We should rejoice that we made Hashem happy! We just must remember that we cannot compare ourselves to others because who knows how we would do had we been given another person’s life? But that doesn’t take away from the greatness of our effort to accomplish. We are accomplishing with the strength Hashem granted us in the situation He chose for us. These accomplishments are incredibly significant, and they bring us to greatness.