Is Van Gogh better than Monet? Is Bach better than Mozart? Is photorealism better than impressionism? Is classical better than jazz?
These questions have obvious answers: they don't have answers. Or rather, the question itself is malformed. Art doesn't exist on a single hierarchy. Different works operate in different dimensions, with different aims, speaking to different sensibilities.
A Van Gogh isn't a failed Monet. It's not even attempting to be a Monet. They're both complete achievements in their own terms.
"Your life is a work of art. And like all works of art, it doesn't need to justify itself by reference to other works."
The Inherited Template
Most people carry around an implicit template for what life "should" look like. This template often comes from family, culture, or some undefined social consensus. It includes specifications about career trajectory, relationship milestones, lifestyle markers, success metrics.
The template might say: university degree, professional career, marriage by thirty, children by thirty-five, home ownership, retirement planning, and so on. Or it might be a different template—entrepreneurial success, creative achievement, spiritual development—but still a template imposed from outside.
People measure themselves against these templates the way a student might measure their painting against a Rembrandt. "I'm not achieving what I'm supposed to. I'm behind. I'm failing."
But who decided Rembrandt was the standard? Who said realistic portraiture was the goal? Who wrote the rubric that says impressionism is less valid than photorealism?
No One Has Authority Over Your Canvas
Here's the uncomfortable truth: no one external to you has the authority to define what your life should look like. They might have opinions. They might have their own templates that worked for them. But the implicit claim that their template is universal—that everyone should be optimizing for the same outcomes—has no grounding.
Your parents' vision of a good life emerged from their experiences, constraints, and values. Your culture's vision emerged from historical contingencies. None of this grants them authority over your particular canvas.
This isn't the same as saying all choices are equally good. It's saying that the criteria for what makes a life good aren't found in external templates. They're found in the actual experience of the person living it.
"The question isn't whether your life looks like someone else's template. It's whether it's a genuine expression of your own nature."
Expression, Not Achievement
There's a shift in orientation here that's worth making explicit. The template-following approach treats life as a series of achievements to unlock: check the boxes, hit the milestones, accumulate the markers of success. The artwork approach treats life as something being expressed—a unique configuration emerging from a unique set of circumstances, preferences, and capacities.
Achievement orientation asks: "Am I successful by external standards?" Expression orientation asks: "Is this an authentic expression of who I am?"
These sometimes overlap. Sometimes authentic expression leads to conventional success. But often it doesn't, and the person pursuing authentic expression needs to be at peace with that divergence.
The Practical Implication
What this means practically is: you have permission to stop measuring yourself against templates that don't fit.
If you're not oriented toward corporate success, stop using corporate success as your metric. If you're not built for conventional relationships, stop treating conventional relationships as the goal. If your values and priorities don't match the mainstream, stop pretending the mainstream is the standard.
This doesn't mean avoiding reflection or growth. It means being honest about what you're actually optimizing for—and giving yourself permission to optimize for that rather than for someone else's vision.
Some people thrive with structure; others with freedom. Some want stability; others want novelty. Some are energized by achievement; others by connection. Some need solitude; others need community. None of these preferences is better than the others. They're different orientations, producing different kinds of lives, each valid on its own terms.
The Question
If your life is a work of art, what kind of art is it trying to be? Not what kind of art has someone told you it should be—what kind of art is it actually expressing?
And if you find that your current life is trying to conform to a template that doesn't fit your actual nature—what would change if you gave yourself permission to paint something else?
Van Gogh wasn't a failed Rembrandt. He was a fully realized Van Gogh. The world is better for it.