The Other Person's Superlative

Here's a lesson in futility: when you drive down a road that is decades old, you aren't sharing in the experiences of the thousands who have gone on that road, before you. In actuality, that road is not in the same place as it was before; the physical position of the earth is constantly changing and has changed long before you drove down that road, so your experience of that drive is not the same in a very physical sense. You are in a different sphere of time and space compared to the others. With every driver, the condition of the road is also changed--microscopically, but changed, nonetheless.

Who, then, has driven down that road first? The ones who made the trip at the road's inception? Or is it a constantly ever-changing entity, making you the only one to experience that road in the only state it will be at that given time?

This is the same with life experience. For instance: my experience of a "refreshing" drink of water will differ from another's, yet it's made up of the same water particles many have had to drink, just at a different time and in a different state--maybe the next people who drink the water I drank, long after it has passed through my system, will have a different experience with each swallow. The water, itself, is the same as it was before on a chemical level, is it not?

My point is this: to whom do we attribute the standard(s) of development and excellence? Who has the true ruler that measures progress? There are too many variables in the human experience to make a final statement of where a person should be at any given time in their life, no? If this is the case, and I believe it is, it becomes apparent that superiority and inferiority of any kind is a false belief. The value of possessions or wealth becomes painfully relative. The age in which one attains something in their life becomes trivial. On the very same path, one could be considered far ahead or far behind, but truly no one has traveled their road before.