Envy

As a therapist, I feel good about feelings.  When it comes to serenity, connection, and success, emotional intelligence counts as much as cognitive intelligence.  Most of us experience similar feelings about similar things, with similar intensity.  We differ concerning our skill at accessing, affirming, and processing our feelings.  These skills allow us not only to acknowledge our emotions, but to integrate them into our thoughts and actions in a constructive way.  It is generally only the feelings we disavow which  sabotage us.  Except that there’s an exception to everything! I have found that one important exception involves envy. Envy is the conviction that others have possessions or attributes that we don’t, and feeling intense desire for what others have and resentment over what we don’t have.  Envy is difficult to process, impossible to reason with, and very stubborn.  Envy is malignant, and when given an inch always takes a mile.  In my experience, the only real option for dealing with envy is to stomp it out.  So it doesn’t consume us, we must stamp out feelings of envy as vigorously and immediately as we would a match dropped on the carpet.  We can always find someone with more than we have; and we can also always find someone with less.  Maybe it should be said that he who worries about who has the most toys never wins.