Whose race are you running?

Everyone in your trade is chasing the same thing, so you chase it too. The certification everyone's getting. The side hustle everyone's starting. The title everyone treats as the next rung. You half-suspect it isn't even what you want — but the whole crowd is moving that way, and falling out of step feels like falling behind. So you run a race you never chose, against people you never agreed to compete with.

Seneca names the danger at the root: "Nothing, therefore, is more important than that we should not, like sheep, follow the flock that has gone before us, and thus proceed not whither we ought, but whither the rest are going" (Of a Happy Life 1, Stewart). Whither the rest are going — not whither you ought. The flock has momentum, not direction. It's possible for an entire profession to be sprinting hard toward a thing barely any of them actually wanted.

This is the week's keystone. Comparison is poisonous mostly when you're measuring against a race that isn't yours. Pick your own finish line and most of the field stops mattering.