Lessons Learned in the Trenches: Part 4a

4. Don't measure yourself by someone else's standard; the results will not be accurate!

A few weeks ago the kids and I were talking about measuring. We first explored the idea of a unit of measure. How many papers long is Daddy's desk? How many Talias long is this wall? How many Benj-hands wide is this doorway? Next we progressed to learning some vocabulary for measuring. I explained that one unit we can use to measure is feet. Having just experienced measuring with various implements, including their own body parts, the kids latched right on to the idea of measuring in feet. I set them to the task of measuring the length of our school room area rug in feet. Confidently they each began to mark off the prescribed distance in a heel-to-toe pattern, counting meticulously: one ... two ... three ... four. But there was a problem! When they reached the other end, each came up with a different answer. This, of course, was the point of my little educational activity: an introduction to the need for a standard unit of measure.

It is a simple illustration with an obvious (to those of us who aren't 4 and 5 years old) outcome. Yet, how often do we employ the same childish technique of measuring ourselves by someone else's standard? According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, one of the earliest meanings of the word standard was simply, a "unit of measure." It later took on the meaning "authoritative or recognized exemplar of quality or correctness." We often take what we would call someone else's "standard" and apply it to ourselves using the second meaning, rather than the first; at least I do!

I'll admit it: I got sucked in. As a new-ish mom with two small children, I knew just enough about the attractions of the online social world known to some as "mommy blogs" to get myself in trouble. For a time I read blog post after blog post written by these amazing women, some of them friends, all of them roughly my age and at my stage of life, who were doing all these wonderful, perfect, amazing things with their lives. Their children were always groomed perfectly with adorable little hairstyles and designer clothes. They always had amazingly artistic photographs of their children engaging in self-initiated creative activities or producing galleries of artistic wonders. Their houses were always spotless. Their days were always spent baking artisan bread, taking picturesque picnic lunches to the local park, and refinishing furniture to decorating perfection. Well, some of them were doing some of these things, some of the time. But I put all those lovely pieces together in my head and was convinced (and yes I do realize that this is a completely irrational statement) that somehow everyone else's life looked like that, and mine? well, mine was an endless mountain of dirty dishes and squabbling preschoolers. In my mind there was a mommy standard, in the "recognized exemplar" sense, and I wasn't meeting it.

I wish I could remember exactly how the realization came to me, but one day it crystallized, just as clearly as if I had always known it: I can't expect my life to look like someone else's because we don't have the same life! Once again, it was an embarrassingly simple truth, but its very simplicity brought hope to my envy-sick soul. 

In the next post we will delve into 4 reasons we should measure ourselves by a unique standard, and how we can find rest in establishing the correct standard.

Other posts in this series:

Lessons Learned in the Trenches: Part 1
Lessons Learned in the Trenches: Part 2
Lessons Learned in the Trenches: Part 3