Thank you for writing this wonderfully thought out response to Stephanie’s response to Talia’s open letter. I learned from Eckhart Tolle that the egoic mind loves to condemn others and make them wrong so that it can feel morally superior. The egoic mind loves to use others for external validation of its worth and righteousness.

Everybody does the best they can given their circumstances — not your best.

Comparing oneself to others is the most useless, brain-cell deadly activity because it kills uniqueness. Just because one one person took a service job while waiting to get another doesn’t make it a viable option for somebody else. Just because one person lives with roommates or a parent to lower living costs doesn’t make it a viable option for somebody else.

All of our brains work differently. Hence economists looking at the same set of data draw polar opposite conclusions and doctors make different diagnoses after looking at same scan.

Instead of being judgmental. Let’s be curious.

Laughing at somebody because of a cocaine addiction is like laughing at them for having cancer or using a wheelchair. Addiction is a serious mental health problem not fuel for schadenfreude.