It's from a teen coming-of-age story, which genre normally I don't enjoy much, but this one seems better written than most--or perhaps, for some reason, I'm just more receptive because of my feelings of isolation recently.
Yeah, you do have to be different to be better, but that's so misleadingly straightforward. In some areas, your "difference" can be one of degree: if I beat you by, say, 0.2 seconds in the 100 m dash, obviously I'm different than you, but the difference can be one of degree, not kind. And people tend to equate a one-side relationship: while it may be necessary to be different to be better, it doesn't follow, pleasant as it might be to think so, that to be different automatically ensures or even systematically leads to "betterness." Not that *that* comes across as bitter or anything ;-)
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Yeah, you do have to be different to be better, but that's so misleadingly straightforward. In some areas, your "difference" can be one of degree: if I beat you by, say, 0.2 seconds in the 100 m dash, obviously I'm different than you, but the difference can be one of degree, not kind. And people tend to equate a one-side relationship: while it may be necessary to be different to be better, it doesn't follow, pleasant as it might be to think so, that to be different automatically ensures or even systematically leads to "betterness." Not that *that* comes across as bitter or anything ;-)
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