Nice post on the New York Times “Happy Days” blog about the inevitable way we compare ourselves with others, and how insidiously easy it can be to see other people’s life choices as a referendum on your own:

Quite a lot of what passes itself off as a dialogue about our society consists of people trying to justify their own choices as the only right or natural ones by denouncing others’ as selfish or pathological or wrong. So it’s easy to overlook that hidden beneath all this smug certainty is a poignant insecurity, and the naked 3 A.M. terror of regret.

Beautiful. This is a major theme in Mind Over Manners. In the conclusion, I wrote something similar:

Many of our choices have ambivalence to them. Even the most happily married person occasionally misses the freedom of her single days. Even the most career-driven professional would like on occasion to chuck it all and become a beachcomber. Even the most ardent locavore is occasionally attracted by the whiff of a McDonald’s French fries. That ambivalence within our own souls—we can so easily project it onto others. Many of the choices we make represent an argument we’ve had with some part of ourselves. When we see another person who made the opposite choice, we’re afraid that she might awaken the part of us that lost the argument and therefore introduce conflict into our lives. Often, out of an instinct of self-protection, we go on the attack.