When I reached the part of the old woman’s story in Candide, I couldn’t get the song of “anything 
you can do I can do better, I can do anything better that you” out of my head. In a way that is what the old woman meant, in my opinion, that everyone always things that they’re in a worse situation than everyone else. In each of us we have that egotistical character which tells us that no one else could be in a worse position than us. We can’t let our self admit it cause there’s going to be no one to show sympathy towards us, to feel sorry for us and what we’ve been through.
The story proves this point by even going as far as saying that each man on the boat felt as though he was the most miserable ma. Not even one person though that someone else could have been through more misery than himself. You are right, we should care about ourselves more than about someone else, but we seem to ignore the others because of this egotistical character. That little devil inside all of us blocks us from admitting that whatever we’ve been through, the person next to you might have gone through worse.
Some people nowadays have a huge devil inside them. I saw a show once that is similar to My Sweet 16. In the show the birthday of the girl got all screwed up, she acted and looked like she was the most miserable girl in the world that night. You see, her mom for her birthday got her a brand new Lexus for her big day, but that was not the car she wanted and she wanted to get receive at her party. What a tragedy!
Birthday Girl (dont know how else to link)
Well said. By frankly, I totally agree with your point because I know I have found myself feeling as “the most unfortunate person in the world at that moment” a couple of times. And yes, just one or two days later and I also found out that my struggles were nothing compared to others.
I also like the irony that you used. “Anything you can do, I can do better” is usually refer to something positive but up until this point in the story, that old woman’s story was just full of sadness.