When two do the same thing, it is not the same thing after all.

Identical actions carry different meanings depending on who performs them and what they cost. The same blunt remark is honesty from one person and cruelty from another, and the same donation is generosity from one and a receipt from another. What a thing means is bound up with the position it comes from.

Before copying something that worked for someone else, ask what made it work: the action, or the standing they had when they did it. And when judging somebody, look at what the act cost them rather than at the act alone. The comparison is almost never as straightforward as it appears.