The sibling called successful can become a comparison nobody formally assigned.

Families rarely announce a ranking, and one usually forms anyway. A word repeated at gatherings, a career that is easy to describe, and one person becomes the reference point everyone else gets measured against, themselves included. Whoever is given that label did not ask for it and often finds it heavy in its own way. Nobody agreed to the comparison, which is exactly why it is so hard to dispute.

Notice when you are measuring your life against a scale nobody actually set. Describing your own year on your own terms, out loud to someone, is a way of leaving a competition you never entered.