Our Ideal

So at my school, there is this program called the Langford Team. It is a group of about 20 students who are chosen based on their leadership qualities, who have to take a two-day workshop class to learn how to lead and solve problems, then must work with a local company to help them solve a problem of their own. I tried out for this, submitted my resume and obtained my references, and did not make it.
I can’t say that I was crushed I didn’t get it, but I was a bit disappointed. My problem with this situation isn’t that I don’t get to waste five days of my life doing something I never wanted to do in the first place. My disappointment comes from rejection.
I guess I never really noticed it until now. It seems that my happiness is directly related my achievement. I do not really care for this idea however. This means that for the rest of my life, I will have to consistently achieve something just to satisfy me. That is really sad, and I am not too happy with this idea. I do not know what to do about it though.
I decided that my accomplishments are only measured in comparison to others. As a matter a fact, that’s how everyone’s accomplishments are measured, because that’s the only way they can be. In our minds we form a picture of how things should be, of what nice is, what mean is, what beauty is, and what success is. All of these ideals are based on things we have seen from other people. We take the good qualities of people, the ones that we think all people should have, and use them to develop our ideal person, and this is what we use to judge ourselves.
My biggest pet peeve are the people who claim to not compare themselves to other people. This is complete bullshit, for this is impossible to do. The word compare is proof enough to dispel this notion. But these are the same people who say they don’t judge others, a task that is also impossible.
The most we can hope for is not to be too hard in our comparisons. To accept that not everyone is the same along with the idea that our ideal person does not and can not exist, and even they have faults are their own.
Peace.