Deserves’ Got Nothing to Do with It
“I looked in your cup to see if you needed more.
You looked in mine to see if I had more than you.”
I recently came across this quote, and it hit me pretty hard. It highlights two powerful mindsets that shape our lives: generosity and envy. One (generosity) is a core virtue and something to aspire to; the other (envy) is one of the seven deadly sins.
At first, the quote seems to contrast generosity and jealousy, suggesting things should be equal. But that’s not the real point. The difference goes deeper, touching on our beliefs and feelings.
It’s about what we believe we deserve.
I’ve talked with people at every stage of financial life: some just starting out, some well-established, and some with more than they ever expected. No matter how much they have, there’s still tension. I find this surprising. Shouldn’t reaching “enough” bring peace?
In theory, yes. But people naturally compare themselves to others. Having “enough” often depends less on what we truly need or value, and more on whether the gap between us and others seems fair.
The scenario often unfolds like this:
You’ve worked hard. Sacrificed. Delayed gratification. Took risks others avoided. Then you see someone whose cup is as full or even fuller than yours and think, “How can that be? Shouldn’t I have as much as they do, if not more?”
Another scenario unfolds more subtly:
You recognize they have worked harder. Sacrificed more. Taken risks you chose not to take. But you’ve worked hard too. Built a good life. Made smart decisions. Did you expect there to be a gap? Sure, you expected that. What’s harder to accept is the size of it. It feels disproportionately large. You don’t believe you should have everything they have, but should they have that much more than you?
These questions seem reasonable, even principled. They sound like fairness.
But fairness, according to whom? And, exactly, how do we measure it?
By creating a private equation in our minds: effort + sacrifice + risk = fair reward. Then we set out to prove it.
You know your own sacrifices well – the late nights, family time you missed, and risks you faced alone. It’s easy to “prove” how much you’ve given, easy to add up the efforts that should produce a fair reward. But there’s a major flaw to this equation, a blind spot.
What you can’t fully see are the details in someone else’s life: their late nights, family sacrifices, risks taken, luck, timing, network, failures endured – all of the things you don’t know about.
It’s easy to overlook someone else’s effort when you don’t know their whole story.
When outcomes do not match expectations (they have more than you or the gap is larger than expected), the response is often visceral and highly emotional.
What makes things even more complicated is how we compare ourselves to others. The truth is our self-awareness (and self-assessment) often misses the mark.
It’s one thing when viewed from the best-case scenario, where you can honestly look at yourself and say you have worked harder, sacrificed more, or taken greater risks than the person you compare yourself to.
It is a very different thing when you have not made those sacrifices or analyzed your situation through the lens of earned proportionality. Instead, you simply react to someone else having more and feel the sharp sting of perceived unfairness.
Either way, the result is the same: we feel we deserve more just because someone else has more. Our focus turns outward. We stop measuring our lives by our own standards and start measuring by the results of others.
The further down the social comparison rabbit hole we go, the worse things get. The initial emotional reaction to relative position crystallizes, eventually hardening into resentment. Few forces are more corrosive to healthy relationships than resentment.
Unlike anger, which burns hot and fades, resentment doesn’t explode. It’s quiet and long-lasting. Resentment smolders. It keeps score and repeats the “it’s not fair” loop in our minds. Over time, it distorts how we see things, erodes gratitude, and keeps us focused on others instead of ourselves. Relationships don’t suffer from one big event, but from a slow build-up of quiet withdrawal and growing dislike. The strain is hard to notice and easy to justify.
Deserve’s Got Nothing to Do With It
There is a line in the film Unforgiven where Gene Hackman’s character says, “I don’t deserve this.” Clint Eastwood’s character responds, “Deserves’ got nothing to do with it.”
It is a hard line. Cold and sharp. Carries a kind of brutal clarity.
Life doesn’t distribute outcomes according to our personal sense of fairness. You can work hard, make sacrifices, and take risks with discipline and purpose. You can do everything to put the odds on your side, but the universe does not guarantee a fair reward, or any reward at all. It never has.
When we base our peace on what we believe we deserve compared to others, we build on shaky ground.
Mark Twain is often credited with saying, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Regardless of attribution, the message holds true. When your satisfaction depends on how your life compares to others, your contentment becomes fragile.
The result is a life that’s constantly in flux and unstable because the reference point for comparison constantly shifts.
Life doesn’t stand still. Your social circle changes over time. Colleagues get promoted, friends retire early, neighbors remodel their kitchens or go on big vacations. Social media makes that circle even bigger. Now, you’re not just comparing yourself to the neighbor down the street, but to every would-be influencer with a camera and a desire for attention.
And it gets worse. You’re not only comparing yourself to people who share your circumstances, but you’re comparing your ordinary Tuesday to someone else’s carefully curated highlight reel. Imagine judging your everyday life against the single best day you’ve ever had. You’d always feel behind.
And the data confirms it. Increased social media use is consistently associated with greater social comparison and lower well-being (Verduyn et al., 2020).
When the reference point constantly shifts, so does your definition of enough.
This turns into a kind of moral relativism in your own life, not in theory, but in practice. Instead of grounding your contentment in steady principles, you let it drift. What feels like enough today depends on what someone else has tomorrow. The standard keeps moving because the comparison keeps moving.
“I need this to be happy, but only if I am not too far behind. I need this to feel successful, but not if someone else has significantly more.”
You take something that should be anchored in principle and build it on shifting sands. There are no absolutes to ground you. Standards change as comparisons change. It’s like driving toward the horizon; it is always out of reach.
I’ve seen people reach financial goals they once thought would be enough. The numbers were clear, the goals set. Then a peer surpassed them, and suddenly the original goal felt too small. Nothing in their life changed except the comparison.
If your happiness depends on whether the gap feels fair, you’ll spend your life auditing other people’s cups. Is that really the life you want, always feeling inadequate or like you’re not measuring up?
A Different Measure
The Stoic philosopher Epictetus once wrote, “He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not but rejoices for those which he has.”
This is a wiser standard. It changes the equation.
Instead of chasing a moving horizon set by someone else, this approach measures life by what you already have, not by what’s out of reach. It’s a philosophy grounded in contentment, not in how much your life matches someone else’s.
This perspective cultivates gratitude.
Gratitude grounds you. It sets your standard from within, not from outside. It frees you from always adjusting your worth based on someone else’s life.
We do not have to live as slaves to comparison. We can define what is enough, recognize progress, and pursue improvement without resenting the success of others.
And there is something even more powerful than simply stepping out of comparison.
Look into someone else’s cup to see if they have enough.
This is generosity.
Generosity isn’t just being content with your own cup. It means stepping outside yourself, looking at others, and asking if they have enough. The focus moves from your own situation to real concern for others’ well-being. You stop measuring and start contributing.
If you live this way, you won’t have much time or energy for keeping score or resenting others.
Now step back and consider the progression.
At one end of the spectrum is comparison. It’s unstable, like a house of cards. Your peace depends on where others stand. Your contentment depends on the size of the gap.
The next step is gratitude. You decide what’s enough and appreciate what you already have. You measure your life by your own standards, not by someone else’s highlight reel. It is a grounded, stable way to live.
Beyond that is generosity, the ideal, where you expand outward. It’s not just freedom from comparison, but a move toward giving to others.
Comparison makes your world smaller. Gratitude steadies it. Generosity makes it bigger.
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“I looked in your cup to see if you needed more.
You looked in mine to see if I had more than you.”
The cups may be the same.
The life built around them is not.
With appreciation,
Ed Vargo
