ENVY
What cowardice it is to be dismayed by the happiness of others and devastated by their good fortune.
MONTESQUIEU
A strange sentiment, envy. We are envious of other people’s happiness and certainly not of their unhappiness. Isn’t that ridiculous? Wouldn’t it be natural to desire their happiness? Why be uneasy when they’re happy? Why feel spiteful of their good qualities? The opposite of envy is rejoicing at all the joys, little and great, experienced by others. Their happiness becomes our own.
Envy does not have desire’s attractive side; it does not come disguised as a righter of wrongs, like anger; it does not adorn itself with showy ornaments, like pride; and it isn’t even lazy, like ignorance. No matter what light you look at it in, it always comes across as detestable.
There are, of course, several degrees of envy and jealousy, a broad palette ranging from envy to blind, destructive rage. Benign, everyday envy distilled into half-conscious thoughts that emerge as disparaging remarks. Envy reflected in mild malice toward a colleague who’s doing better than us, in caustic reflections on a friend who always seems to meet with good fortune. Envy and jealousy derive from the fundamental inability to rejoice in someone else’s happiness or success. The jealous man rehearses the injury in his mind, rubbing salt in the wound over and over again. There is no chance of happiness whatsoever at that moment.
In every instance, envy is the product of a wound to self-importance and the fruit of an illusion. What’s more, envy and jealousy are absurd for whoever feels them, since unless he resorts to violence, he is their only victim. His pique does not prevent those he’s jealous of from enjoying further success, wealth, or distinction.
The truth is, what can other people’s happiness possibly deprive us of? Nothing, of course. Only the ego can be wounded by it and feel it as pain. It is the ego that can’t bear other people’s good cheer when we’re depressed or their good health when we’re sick. Why not take their joy as a source of inspiration instead of making it a source of vexation and frustration?
What about the jealousy born of a sense of injustice or betrayal? It’s heartbreaking to be deceived by someone we are deeply attached to, but it is again self-love that is responsible for the ensuing suffering. La Rochefoucauld observes in his Maxims that “there is more self-love than love in jealousy.”
A friend of mine recently confided in me. “My husband’s infidelity hurts me on the deepest level. I can’t stand the idea of his being happier with another woman. I keep asking myself the same question: ‘Why not me? What does he find in her that I don’t have?’”
It’s extremely difficult to maintain one’s equanimity in such circumstances. Fear of abandonment and a sense of insecurity are closely linked to the lack of inner freedom. Self-absorption, with its inseparable posse of fear and hope, attraction and rejection, is the foremost enemy of inner peace. If we really want someone else to be happy, we can’t very well insist on telling them how they have to go about it. Only the ego has the nerve to say: “Your happiness depends on mine.” As Swami Prajnanpad has written: “When you love someone, you cannot expect him to do as you please. That would be tantamount to loving yourself.”1
If we are even remotely able to think clearly, we should courageously try to set aside the mental images that torture us and the obsessiveness that makes us dream of cruel reprisals against the “usurper” of whom we are jealous, and refrain from reinforcing them. These are the direct results of our having forgotten our innermost potential for affection and peace. It will be helpful to generate empathy and altruistic love for all people, including our rivals. This antidote will heal the wound, and in time envy and jealousy will come to seem like merely a bad dream.