Overacheiverism

     My friends are a pretty cool group.  By sophomore year of college, there was a high probability that a good friend of mine was studying or working in a different country.  At any given time since then, I can probably say that I know at least one person living abroad, working on some cool project; and these friends are the Americans, not the wonderful people who are from "abroad," and doing wonderful things at home, although they certainly are fabulous as well.  Reasons for going abroad vary, some studying, some working, some travelling, and usually there's more than one of those going on.  Now, I'm in the Peace Corps, where I join a selection of acquaintances who have been or are serving in various projects around the world, and my "cool friend" quota is definitely increasing.
     There are more than 200 PCVs serving here in Panama as I write, in 4 or 5 projects, all over the country.  (I'm going to use the PCV Panama community as my focus for this post, but the relevance certainly isn't limited to this group.)  When a group of PCVs get together here, there's the usual griping about trouble at work, venting about issues with co-workers, and gossiping about Panamanians and other volunteers.  And we talk about project challenges and successes that we've had, and projects that other volunteers are doing.
     Here's where the problem I see is.  We talk about our projects and the projects that other volunteers are running, and the other volunteer's always sounds so amazing.  That PCV has community engagement, organization, energy, and according to the grapevine, great results.  We wonder why we can't pull off a project like that; why our community is so hard to work with, and why can't we be a better volunteer, like that one.  First of all, an accurate comparison is basically impossible here, given the differences in everything from projects, to communities, to resources, to the PCV's interests and talents.  It's like comparing apples to oranges, and does no credit to any party involved.
     The second, more severe problem, is that there are these admiration conversations on how productive Superstar PCV A is being (Superstar PCV A not being present in said conversation), and then later, on a separate occasion, Superstar PCV A is talking about how his/her project isn't talking off, s/he don't think the project is working, but if only s/he could be more like Superstar PCV B!  People are just too...individual to be usefully compared.
     It's wonderful to have goals and standards.  It's great to have to internal drive to constantly be pushing oneself to improvement, ever striving for improvement.  And competition can be a wonderful motivator, as has been demonstrated in the Space Race, many solar car races, in school, sporting events (fancy that!)   But is it possible, or do I ask too much, for us to somehow learn to see what we are doing and acknowledge the progress, or at least hard work, that we are doing?  For me, I've learned that no matter how hard I've worked at something, or whatever results I get, I find a million ways I could have worked harder to achieve a better result.  And yes, that pushes me to do better next time, which certainly improves "next time."  But constantly finding fault and highlighting the failings of what's been done, past practices, means that it's very rare, and very difficult to find satisfaction in a job well done.  Perhaps I just haven't worked hard enough yet, and if I keep trying, I'll get there...but somehow, I don't think that that is the way it works.
     Reflecting of the conversations with other PCVs and friends outside of Peace Corps, I can't fault us for being dissatisfied with aspects of our performance that we know we can improve.  Maybe, though, we could practice seeing ourselves through other people's eyes.  Not to the point of narcissism or self-adulation (little danger of that, given where we're coming from), but just distanced from ourselves enough to see ourselves and our efforts from another perspective.