You're often jealous of other people's success because some of it lands on a want of your own, sometimes one you've set aside or never said out loud. Envy is choosy. Most people's wins pass you by, and a few sting. Often those few work like a map, pointing back at something of yours.
The toast is for Imogen, whose company sold on Monday, and Thaddeus raises his glass as high as anyone.
They started in the same graduate intake twelve years ago. Tonight there are eight of them in a private room above a restaurant in City Walk, and the sale price is the rumour going round the table. Thaddeus is glad for her, and none of it bothers him.
Then someone asks what she'll do now.
"Nothing," Imogen says. "For a year, at least. Then I'll see."
That's when the pang comes, quick and sharp, and he doesn't see it coming. Not at the sale. Not at the price either. At "Then I'll see."
He likes his work, and he's good at it. Every week he can remember has had a plan in it.
Later, when the table goes round asking what each of them would do with a year off, he laughs and says he'd be bored by the second Tuesday. In the taxi home he finds he's still answering the question, and the answers he gets to aren't ones he'd say at a table.
Why am I jealous of other people's success?
Because some successes land on a want of your own. Where you want nothing, someone else's win is just news. Where there's a want you've set aside, or never admitted to, seeing another person live it can sting. The sting is choosy, and what it picks often points at you.
Plenty of kind, generous people feel envy now and then. When it's with you most days, or travels with weeks of low mood, a doctor or a mental health professional is worth talking to, and urges to harm someone or yourself need help without delay. If you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services.
Envy sometimes slips out sideways, as a cool reply or a sharp joke. A pause before answering helps there, and how to respond instead of react shows one way to take it.
Is it envy or jealousy?
In everyday English, either word will do. Merriam-Webster defines envy as "painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage." Its usage note on the two words is about describing someone with "a very strong desire for something that belongs to someone else", and it says "both envious and jealous commonly carry this meaning." Only jealous is also used for someone who "tends to suspect unfaithfulness", and that's another subject.
Notice how the definition of envy is built. There's the painful awareness, and there's the desire. In my experience, the desire is where the information is, and it's often narrower than "the same advantage". Thaddeus doesn't want her company or her price. What caught him was smaller: three words about not knowing what comes next.
Why does envy pick some people and not others?
Because, as a rule, it bites where there's a want to bite on.
Think of the successes you've heard about this year. Perhaps a friend made partner, a stranger online retired at forty, or someone you once worked with now runs the company. Most of them, you may have been glad about or barely noticed. If one or two stayed with you for days, they were often the ones that met a want of your own.
The hook is usually small. Rarely her whole career; more often the evening she turned down a big job and went to the beach instead. Rarely his success as a whole; more often the fact that he takes Fridays off. It catches on a detail, and the detail is where the map is drawn.
If someone's name came to mind as you read, my Who Am I? masterclass asks about you instead. You read a written guide, hear me narrate the ideas, then try a guided part, free once you enter GIFT26. Or read on.
What is the sting pointing at?
Often at a want of yours that's been out of use for a while.
Sometimes it's a plan you shelved because it didn't fit the life you were building. Sometimes it's a wish that drew comments somewhere and stopped being said aloud: to be on a stage, to run the show, to live more slowly than the people near you seemed to approve of. Shelving a want can be wise. Life asks for trade-offs, and plenty of yours were good ones.
Not every want was put down by choice, though. When infertility, grief, illness, money or someone else's bias stood in the way, nothing was shelved. Something was kept from you, and envy that reaches it can carry real loss. That isn't a map to read alone. A close friend, a counsellor or a doctor is better company for it.
Old habits of keeping safe can also keep a few wants off the table, sometimes for years. Wants left off the table don't disappear. They wait, and envy is one of the ways they get your attention.
Thaddeus's pang landed on three words about an open year. Whatever in him wants a stretch of life with no plan on it wasn't missing. It was riding home in a taxi, still answering the question.
You are not broken. You are buried. And envy, strange as it sounds, can lead you straight to what's buried.
What if it's money or work you envy?
Then start with the plain reading, because sometimes the map points exactly where it seems to. If someone's promotion stings because you want a promotion, then you want a promotion. Wanting to earn more, learn more or go further at work is a good thing to want. A course, a conversation at work or a new role are all proper ways to go after it.
And if the sting comes from real pressure, such as rent you're struggling to cover, a debt or a job that might go, that's a real worry about real money. It deserves practical help first: your bank, a debt advice service, or someone who knows your field. Nothing below asks you to set that aside.
Sometimes, though, the pang sits a little to one side of the money. What stays is that she asked for it, or that he set his own hours. When the sting keeps returning to something the money only came with, that detail is worth a look. If it's someone's company that stings and you run one yourself, when your business becomes your identity looks at how much a company can end up holding for the person behind it.
What can one small pang of envy show you?
This is a reflection exercise, not therapy and not medical care. Whatever a doctor or therapist is doing for you carries on unchanged. Stopping a treatment or a medicine is no part of it, and neither is leaning less on your supporters, including any recovery programme you're part of and everyone who helps you through it. Leave out envy that involves someone who has hurt you; anything about your looks, your health or your body; any want that infertility, grief, illness, money or someone's bias has kept from you; and any pang about money you need for essentials, which goes to the practical help above. If envy ever comes with urges to harm someone or yourself, that's a conversation for a doctor, not for this page, and if you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services.
You'll need five quiet minutes, sitting down, and nothing to write with.
- Think of someone whose news gave you a twinge this month. Pick a mild one, the kind that faded within the hour.
- Put the news into a few words, as if passing it on. "She sold the company." "He made partner." Nothing more than that.
- Find the moment the pang arrived. Go through it slowly. Usually it wasn't the news itself but a detail inside it: a line in an announcement, a photo, three words at dinner.
- Look for the verb in that moment. What was the person doing right then? Leading, resting, saying no, making something, being heard. The verb often says more than the prize.
- Notice what in the same story left you cold. The title, the figure, the applause. Whatever passed you by marks the edge of the map.
- Leave the other person out of whatever comes next. If anything from this is worth keeping, it's the verb. There's no need to message them, look them up or change anything between you.
You can end this at any step, or skip it altogether. Anything heavy it leaves behind is worth taking to someone you trust, or to your doctor.
Should the Who Am I? masterclass come next?
My Who Am I? masterclass carries no fee with the code GIFT26. Here's how I'd weigh it up.
- What you found was more about you than about them. Ease, nerve, play, an open year. The masterclass takes its name from one question, and it's a question about you.
- Hearing it spoken suits you. The middle part is a narrated video, and the page says of it, "It's a conversation."
- You've known a moment of quiet you couldn't explain. The page is written for people who have had "moments of inexplicable stillness".
A note from me on health, concerning the guided session, which takes around twenty minutes: anyone who has felt unreal, detached or as if life were happening at a distance, or is in treatment for it, should talk to a doctor first or leave that session out. Anyone may pause or end it whenever they like, rest their feet flat on the floor, open their eyes and tell a person they trust.
Map is the kindest word I know for envy.
Rayyan, Amazon.com, on my book: "If self-improvement has stopped working for you, this explains why."
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.
P.S. Receive the Masterclass on an evening with nothing to catch up on. Everyone else's news will keep until morning.