Why the Same Person Feels Different in Every Room (Especially When That Person Happens to Be You)
I was standing in line at the grocery store last Tuesday when the woman ahead of me started apologizing to the cashier. Her credit card had been declined¹, and she was frantically digging through her purse, muttering about how she must have grabbed the wrong card. The cashier, a teenager with purple hair and infinite patience, simply smiled and waited.
What struck me wasn't the woman's embarrassment (we've all been there) but the cashier's response. No eye rolls. No impatient sighs. Just gentle waiting, as if someone struggling with a payment was the most natural thing in the world. The woman finally found her backup card, paid, and left with profuse thanks. But I kept thinking about that moment of grace, how the teenager had created a space where financial hiccups weren't shameful but simply human.
I remember this scene because it illuminated something I'd been wrestling with: how context shapes not just how we're perceived, but how we perceive ourselves. The same woman who felt mortified at checkout would probably feel completely normal mentioning her card troubles to her sister later. Same person, same situation, entirely different emotional landscape.
The Stone Parable and the Architecture of Value
There's an old story I heard recently about a young boy who approached his father with the most fundamental question any human can ask: "What is my life worth?"
The father, being wise in the particular way that parable-fathers are wise², didn't launch into a lecture about intrinsic human dignity or start calculating the chemical value of the minerals in the boy's body³. Instead, he handed his son a small, ordinary-looking stone and said, "Take this to the market. If anyone asks the price, raise two fingers and don't say anything."
The boy, being obedient in the particular way that parable-children are obedient⁴, took the stone to the market. Soon enough, an old woman approached him, examining the stone with interest. "How much is that rock?" she asked. "I want it for my garden."
The boy held up two fingers, exactly as instructed.
"Two dollars?" the woman replied immediately. "I'll take it."
But before she could complete the transaction, the boy turned and ran home to tell his father what had happened. The father listened, nodded thoughtfully, and said, "Now take the stone to the museum. If anyone asks the price, raise two fingers and don't say anything."
Back out the boy went, this time to the local museum⁵. A well-dressed man in a suit approached him, studying the stone with considerably more intensity than the garden-loving woman had shown. "How much is that stone?" he asked. "I want it for my home."
Again, the boy held up two fingers.
"Two hundred dollars?" the man responded without hesitation. "I'll take it."
Once more, before any money could change hands, the boy ran home to report this strange development to his father⁶. The father listened again, nodded again, and delivered his final instruction: "Now take the stone to the precious gem store. If the owner asks the price, raise two fingers and don't say anything."
The boy made his third journey, this time to a shop that specialized in rare stones and precious gems. The owner took one look at what the boy was carrying and his entire demeanor changed. His eyes widened. His breathing quickened. "Where did you find that rare stone?" he asked, his voice filled with something approaching reverence. "I have been looking for it my entire life. How much will you sell it for?"
The boy, faithful to his father's instructions to the end, held up two fingers.
"Twenty thousand dollars?" the owner gasped. "I'll take it."
But the boy, having learned the pattern by now, turned and ran home one final time⁷.
The parable is elegant in its simplicity, but it points to something more complex about human worth. We don't have inherent, fixed value inscribed on our foreheads. Our worth emerges from the intersection of who we are and where we find ourselves. It's relational, contextual, and fluid⁸.
Consider the introvert who feels invisible at networking events but becomes magnetic in small group settings⁹. Or the analytical mind that struggles with abstract brainstorming but excels when given concrete problems to solve. The person remains constant; the environment determines whether their particular configuration of traits is seen as valuable or problematic.
This isn't just feel-good philosophy. It has serious implications for how we navigate our lives and, more importantly, how we understand our own potential¹⁰.
The Neurodiversity Lens: Different Operating Systems
I once heard a mother describe her neurodivergent son as having "a different operating system, not a broken one." This kind of reframing strikes is the heart of how context shapes experience. A mind that processes information differently isn't inherently better or worse. It simply functions optimally under different conditions.
Temple Grandin, the renowned autism researcher, talks about how her visual thinking style made traditional academic writing torture but made her revolutionary in animal science¹¹. Her brain wasn't deficient; it was specialized for a context that most people never encounter. Had she remained in environments that demanded only verbal-linear processing, her gifts would have remained hidden.
But this principle extends beyond neurodiversity. Each of us carries a unique constellation of traits, preferences, and abilities¹². Some of these will shine in certain contexts and struggle in others. The question becomes: are we intentionally seeking the contexts where we can thrive, or are we trying to force ourselves into spaces where we'll perpetually feel inadequate?
What environments make you feel most capable? Most energized? Most authentically yourself?
The Paradox of Attributes
Jerry Seinfeld once said something revealing about depression and creativity. When asked about managing depressive episodes, he explained that he'd read somewhere that depression often accompanies creative brains. "I realized, well, I wouldn’t have all this other good stuff without that. That just comes in the kit."
This idea of attributes coming "in the kit" is key¹³. We tend to think of traits as either positive or negative, but most human characteristics contain the seeds of both advantage and struggle. Sensitivity can lead to deep empathy but also to overwhelming emotional pain. Perfectionism can drive excellence but also paralysis. High energy can fuel productivity but also burnout¹⁴.
The same trait that makes someone difficult to work with in one environment might make them invaluable in another. The person who asks too many questions in a routine meeting might be exactly what you need when investigating a complex problem. The colleague who seems scattered might be the one who notices patterns others miss¹⁵.
This suggests that instead of trying to eliminate our "difficult" traits, we might do better to understand in which contexts those traits become assets.
The Geography Metaphor
Think of personal traits as geographical features. A mountain is neither good nor bad; it simply is. But if you need to build a city, mountains are obstacles. If you want to ski, they're paradise. If you're trying to grow crops, they're problematic. If you're looking for mineral resources, they might contain treasure.
Your personality has its own geography. Some traits are like fertile valleys, useful in many contexts. Others are like specialized ecosystems, they thrive only under specific conditions but can be remarkable when those conditions are met.
The mistake we often make is trying to flatten our mountains and fill in our valleys to create uniform terrain. But what if instead we learned to read our internal geography and then sought out environments where our particular landscape could be not just tolerated but celebrated?
The Professional Application
This geography metaphor has obvious applications in career choice, but it goes deeper than just finding the right job. It's about understanding how to position yourself within any role you inhabit.
I know a software engineer who struggled for years trying to be a traditional "heads-down coder." She felt like she was failing because she kept getting distracted by user experience questions and business strategy concerns. Finally, she stopped fighting these interests and moved into a role that bridged engineering and product management. Same technical skills, same curious mind, but now operating in a context that valued her broad perspective rather than seeing it as lack of focus.
How often do we judge ourselves harshly for not thriving in environments that simply weren't designed for our particular strengths?
The Practice of Context Awareness
Developing context awareness isn't finding one perfect environment and staying there forever. It's becoming fluent in reading situations and understanding how to navigate them effectively. Sometimes this means choosing different environments. Sometimes it means creating micro-environments within larger systems. Sometimes it means temporarily operating outside your optimal zone while working toward better positioning.
The key is recognizing that your experience of struggle or success isn't just about your individual capabilities. It's about the fit between your capabilities and your current context.
Start paying attention to patterns. When do you feel most energized versus depleted? What types of problems naturally interest you versus those you have to force yourself to engage with? Which social dynamics bring out your best thinking versus those that make you feel defensive or withdrawn?
The Responsibility of Light
If we accept that context dramatically influences both performance and self-perception, then we bear some responsibility for the contexts we choose. I'm not blaming people for difficult circumstances—many factors affecting our environments are beyond our control. But within whatever constraints exist, we often have more agency than we recognize.
Sometimes this means advocating for changes to existing environments. Sometimes it means gradually transitioning to new ones. Sometimes it means reframing how we think about the environment we're currently in. And sometimes it means recognizing that what we're experiencing isn't personal failure but environmental mismatch.
The parent helping a child find their light has to balance accepting who the child is while also helping them develop skills to thrive in various contexts. But first comes the acceptance: this is who they are, and that's not a problem to be solved but a reality to be understood and honored.
The Question of Worth
We return to the original question: what determines human worth?
The stone parable suggests that worth isn't intrinsic but emerges from a relationship between the object and its context, between the person and their environment.
This could be depressing if we take it to mean we have no inherent value. But it's actually liberating. If worth is contextual, then perceived lack of worth simply indicates mismatched context not fundamental deficiency.
We all carry our own geography of strengths and struggles. The work is not to smooth every edge or erase the contours but to see them clearly, to map where the ground rises, where it narrows, where it opens into passage.
Worth is never static. A stone in a garden is decoration. In a museum, artifact. In a jeweler’s case, treasure. The substance is constant. What changes is the light that strikes it, the setting that surrounds it.
The same is true of people. The trait dismissed as liability in one place becomes indispensable in another. What once drew criticism becomes the reason you are trusted. Geography remains the same; the valuation shifts with the terrain around it.
This means the measure of your worth has never been absence or deficiency. It has always been placement. You have already carried your stone into gardens that made it look plain, into rooms that dimmed it, into hands that couldn’t recognize it. You will carry it again. What changes is not the stone. What changes is the ground you set it on, and the light that falls across it.
And once you see this, once you realize how much of your value has always depended on context, the landscape inside you tilts. You stop treating your terrain as broken. You begin to see it as land worth crossing. And in that recognition, your worth doesn’t just sit waiting to be noticed. It starts to radiate, altering everything it touches.
¹ I realize starting with a grocery store scene risks cliché, but bear with me. Sometimes the most ordinary moments contain the deepest insights.
² There's something about parable-fathers that makes them incapable of giving straight answers. They're always handing out stones or sending sons on mysterious errands. One wonders if they learned this technique in some ancient graduate program for Wise Father Responses.
³ Though if you're curious, the human body contains about $160 worth of chemical elements at current market prices. Not exactly inspiring for a life-worth conversation.
⁴ Modern children would probably respond with "Why?" or "Can I just Venmo them?" But parables require a certain suspension of contemporary skepticism.
⁵ The fact that museums were apparently open to random children wandering in with rocks to sell suggests this parable predates modern security protocols.
⁶ You have to admire the boy's discipline here. Most people, upon discovering their random rock was worth $200, would pocket the money and fabricate a story about getting $2 for it.
⁷ The gem store owner, presumably, spent the rest of the day wondering why children keep showing him priceless stones and then fleeing before completing transactions.
⁸ This relational view of worth aligns with what psychologists call the "person-environment fit" theory, which suggests that behavior and well-being result from the interaction between individual characteristics and environmental factors.
⁹ I'm thinking specifically of a friend who transforms from wallflower to brilliant conversationalist the moment you get her away from crowds. Same brain, same insights, entirely different social chemistry.
¹⁰ The uncomfortable implication here is that we might be complicit in our own struggles by repeatedly choosing environments that don't suit us. Though "choosing" is a loaded word when many environmental factors are beyond our control.
¹¹ Grandin's work with cattle revolutionized slaughterhouse design precisely because she could see what others couldn't—how physical spaces felt from an animal's perspective. Her autism wasn't incidental to her success; it was integral to it.
¹² The phrase "constellation of traits" sounds poetic, but it's actually quite literal. Like stars, individual traits take on different meanings depending on how they're arranged and what surrounds them.
¹³ Seinfeld's insight cuts through decades of self-help culture insisting we can optimize away our difficult traits. Sometimes the "difficult" parts aren't bugs; they're features operating in the wrong environment.
¹⁴ I once knew someone whose obsessive attention to detail made him impossible in creative brainstorming sessions but invaluable during project implementation. Same trait, different phases of work.
¹⁵ There's research in organizational psychology showing that teams with greater cognitive diversity often outperform more homogeneous groups on complex tasks, even though they may struggle more with basic coordination. The scattered colleague might be providing exactly the cognitive diversity the team needs.