The Cost of Being a Star

"I had the fortune, last misfortune of being good at a bunch of things that were laudatory when I was little," he says. "If I couldn't pick it up right away and be a star, I didn't want to touch it." We're comparing ourselves sometimes not to other people in our lives, but to some inner standard, he says. And what happens? It doesn't develop when we avoid it. He asks: Why do so many species organize themselves into pecking orders?