The person ahead of you in a queue is not ahead of you in a life.

Queues create a ranking that means nothing outside the queue. Someone is three places forward for reasons of timing, and the mind treats it as a small defeat, because we are quick to read any order as a scoreboard. The same reflex runs through careers, houses and families, wherever people appear to be lined up. Different lives are not one line at different points.

When the comparison starts, name what you are actually measuring and ask whether you want it. Sometimes you do, and then it becomes a plan rather than a grievance. More often the position was invented by where you happened to be standing.