Once upon a time, two fish; one older and one younger, passed each other in opposite directions while swimming in a lake. By way of greeting, the older fish nodded and said “How’s the water, today, friend?” The younger fish, looking baffled, whispered under his breath as he passed, “What is water?”

Remember in history class when we learned about the Industrial Revolution and found out that the working conditions back then were utterly horrific? People would lose limbs regularly and children would often become physically deformed because of the laborious tasks they were performing and their lack of exposure to sunlight. Men working in chemical factories would often work under such dangerous conditions that fingers would literally melt off and they would be forced to stop working. But don’t worry, they would instantly be replaced by one of the other thousands of desperate people in need of employment until their fingers would melt off and the grotesque cycle would continue. If you’re having a hard time believing that human beings lived like this, you’re not alone. I was struggling to wrap my mind around the idea when my sister said, very profoundly, “those were the waters they swam in,” aka: that was life; that was all they knew; they didn’t know any other way.

I wake up an average of four times a night. Sometimes more, sometimes less, always for a varied duration of time depending on where we are in the sick/well cycle of winter and the teething/night training cycles of my babies. I’ve been doing this on and off (mostly on) for the last seven years of my life. The water I swim in is sleepy. It’s heavy and tired. It’s foggy and murky and makes me forget really obvious things so that I have to do things like set a reminder on my phone that it’s my son’s birthday on Wednesday lest I forget. But the funny thing is that because it’s become the water I swim in, I often forget that I’m more tired than I would be under different circumstances. So I’ll say things like, “I don’t know why I’m so out of it today,” forgetting that it’s because I’m not sleeping. This sleepy water has become my normal. I don’t think about it most days (unless the night before saw me rocking a baby for an hour or longer at 3am) and just go about my business on less sleep than any health magazine would ever recommend an adult human should have.

Because it is my normal right now to be constantly a little sleepy, because I don’t know any other way, I sometimes get frustrated with myself because ‘pre-babies’ Alicia would have always, or would have never, or friends of mine always or never, or my mom always or never, and on and on it goes and I see my life as failing through the lens of a comparison that doesn’t account for a) the waters I’m swimming in or b) the waters of the people I’m comparing myself to. Because, frankly, I just can’t see them.

When we compare ourselves to others, we’re telling ourselves lies. Lies we can’t even comprehend because the makeup of each, individual persons’ waters are so infinitely nuanced that we can never truly have the full picture. Let’s face it, we struggle to see the full picture of our own lives, let alone our neighbor’s. We compare ourselves to the friend with the tidy house and don’t consider the fact that her children are older and in school all day long while ours are toddlers who’d just as soon rip a chore chart into tiny shreds and flush them down the toilet as to put stickers on one. We compare ourselves to our healthy, fit, size 2 sister without considering the fact that we’ve had four kids in as many years and can barely feed ourselves their leftovers, let alone get down the solid nutrition we’d need in order to be able to workout 6 times a week. And we can’t take into account how much sleep they are getting, or who they got into a fight with this morning, or how their marriage is doing, or any of the other billions of circumstances that enter into the complex equation of their lives and change the pH balance of the water they swim in.

But here’s the thing! Our water isn’t a) stagnate or b) all bad. The great thing about the Industrial Revolution is that because the working conditions were so egregious, the people gradually became aware of the ‘waters’ they were swimming in and noticed that they needed to be changed in order for the people to live longer, happier, healthier lives. This led to the forming of Labor Unions and Child Labor Laws which drastically improved the living conditions of people and changed the makeup of their waters to become slightly more temperate and comfortable. Those changes have lasted generations until finally in our time, we can’t even comprehend swimming in anything like that.

Discovering the components of what we are currently swimming in might end up being among the most empowering realizations of our lives. It might mean that we need to add some things: get more sleep; exercise regularly; eat more veggies; read more books; get more organized; etc., but it also might mean letting go of some things because our waters are, for the time being, sleepy; or heavy with grief; or overwhelmed with the raising of tiny humans; or dealing with a recurring health concern; or mentoring a wayward child.

Check in with yourself, friend. See what your waters are looking like right now and then change them as they need to be changed. But always allow yourself the grace you deserve when measuring the successes and failures of your life. Always allow for the unseen, environmental circumstances that contribute to what your ‘best’ looks like today. And stop comparing that output with anybody’s else’s. Because who knows? Maybe their water is just a little less sleepy than yours.