Envying Someone Better, and the Road You Never See

Same room, desks pushed side by side, and one person is clearly moving faster. Everyone who works has met at least one of them. He doesn't dislike the guy — that's the uncomfortable part.

People crowd around the other desk to say nice things; he sits on his side and says nothing. Not out of politeness — anything he could add would sound thin. So his head hands him a tidy explanation: the guy just got lucky. That word is a relief, because once he says it he doesn't have to look at his own share of things. He keeps it for a week, until he stands close enough to that desk to see the stack of books with their spines worn through, page edges curled from being turned too many times. The guy started learning this at twenty. The "luck" he kept talking about turns out to be a long stretch of road he never once looked at.

Every night, the same thing. Home, laptop open, two columns set side by side, measuring one item at a time. Nobody asked him to do this — he builds that table himself, every night, and every night he comes up short. Until one evening he looks up, out at the building across the way, and there's still one more window lit. The person he's been measuring himself against is probably measuring someone too, right now. This ladder has no top, which is why the count never adds up.

So he asks outright: where did you learn all this. The guy talks about four years of working two jobs at once, working until it stuck. He'd assumed it was all laid out for the man — that neat shaft of light falling across the other desk each morning, he'd figured it just arrived. It didn't. It was paid for on nights when a desk lamp stayed on and nobody was around to see it.

He's good. I really did envy him. My road — only I can walk it.

He writes a few lines down and starts from where he is, not from where the other man is. As for the road someone walked to reach the place they're standing now — have you ever asked?