The only time you should look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.
Interpretation
Focus on the well-being of others rather than comparing yourself to them.
This quote emphasizes the importance of caring for others and ensuring they have what they need, rather than engaging in jealousy or comparison. It suggests that we should be motivated by kindness and generosity, rather than competition or envy, which can detract from our own happiness and the happiness of those around us.
In practice
During a community meeting about helping neighbors, I shared this quote to encourage generosity.
I just always loved comedy and I really wanted to be good at it. And it was heartbreaking, 'cause I started and I wasn't good at it. I was only 17-years-old, so I had a lot to learn about life in general. But I just kept on trying. I was young enough and stupid enough and I had no other choice. I had nothing else I was good at.
It's a positive thing to talk about terrible things and make people laugh about them.
[about being a father] I don't really remember what it was like before. Whatever I had going on, it was bullshit. It wasn't important. It's kind of a nice thing about being a dad. My identity is really about them now, and what I can do for them, so it sort of takes the pressure off of your own life. What am I going to do, who am I? Who cares, you've got to get your kids to school. So I like it that way.
In 27 years doing this, I've seen a handful of truly great, masterful standup sets. One was Tig Notaro last night at Largo.
When you write from your gut and let the stuff stay flawed and don't let anybody tell you to make it better, it can end up looking like nothing else.
People come back from flights and tell you a story like it's a horror story. That's how bad they make it sound. They're like, 'It was the worst day of my life. We didn't board for 20 minutes and they made us sit there on the runway for 40 minutes.' Oh really? What happened next? Did you fly in the air, incredibly, like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight you non-contributing zero?'
Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.
We have a tendency to make assumptions about everything! The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they are truth. We could swear they are real. We make assumptions about what others are doing or thinking-we take it personally-then we blame them and react by sending emotional poison in our word. That is why whenever we make assumptions, we're asking for problems. We make assumptions, we misunderstand, we take it personally, and we end up creating a whole big drama for nothing.
Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation. The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation.
What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats?
It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.
Let him that is without stone among you cast the first thing he can lay his hands on.
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