Why Were You Not Zusha?
In his last days Reb Zusha explained that Heaven will ask each person to be himself, not someone else.
Chassidim relate that near the end of his life Reb Zusha was found trembling. His talmidim asked what he feared. He answered that in the world to come he would not be asked why he had not been Moses. Moses’s task was given to Moses, and Zusha’s task was given to Zusha. He expected the question, “Why were you not Zusha?” Each soul, he meant, arrives with its own mix of talents, struggles and circumstances, and no other soul can carry them. Measuring yourself against a greater tzaddik will only discourage you. The real accounting is whether you used what Hashem gave you, in your own place and your own voice. This is a teaching of humility and of courage. It asks nothing grand of a person except to be fully who he was made to be.
Source: Saying of Reb Zusha before his passing, told in Martin Buber, Or HaGanuz (Schocken, 1946); English: Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters (Schocken, 1947), the Zusya section.
Think of the person you most often compare yourself to. Then ask a different question: what is one thing that only you can do for someone this week? It might be a call to an older relative, a patient answer to your child, or the way you sing at the Shabbos table. Do that one thing with your whole heart, and let the comparison go. That is the work Reb Zusha believed we will be asked about.