Take our Self-Esteem Test

Find a therapist near me

People may interpret others’ success as immoral when achievement feels inaccessible to them.

Moral positions can function to protect the legitimacy of one’s life circumstances.

Deprivation reshapes not only decisions but how meaning and moral value are assigned.

At a friend’s party many years ago, I found myself speaking with two people I had never met before—siblings, though I did not realise that immediately. They were, in different ways, similarly striking.

With the brother, on who earns a life.

The conversation with the brother shifted quickly. At first, he seemed easygoing and slightly amusing, making small jokes that people around him picked up on and laughed at. At some point, the others drifted away, and we were left in conversation on our own. Up until then, it had felt easy. He was quick, socially attuned, the kind of person who knew how to keep a group engaged—making the right remark at the right moment, picking up on the mood, keeping things light.

Somewhere along the way, I mentioned, in passing, that I was doing a Master’s degree at a well-known university. I said it simply, as part of explaining what I had been doing recently, adding that the path there had not been straightforward.

Something in the conversation shifted then.

Not abruptly, but noticeably. The ease thinned. What I had described as difficulty seemed to register differently for him—not as something earned through effort, but as........

© Psychology Today