Of all the characteristics of ordinary nature, envy is the most unfortunate, not only does the envious person wish to inflict misfortune and do whatever he can with impunity, but he is also himself rendered unhappy by envy. Instead of deriving pleasure from what he has, he derives pain from what others have. If he can, he deprives others of their advantages, which to him is as desirable as it would be to secure the same advantages himself. Fortunately, however, there is in human nature a compensatory passion, namely, that of admiration. Whoever wishes to increase human happiness must wish to increase admiration and to diminish envy.
What cure is there for envy? The only cure for envy in the case of ordinary men and women is happiness, and the difficulty is that envy is itself a terrible obstacle to happiness.
Merely to realize the causes of one’s own envious feelings is to take a long step towards curing them. The habit of thinking in terms of comparison is a fatal one. When anything pleasant occurs it should be enjoyed to the full, without stopping to think that it is not so pleasant as something else that may possibly be happening to someone else. “Yes,” he will say to himself, “the lady of my heart is lovely, I love her and she loves me, but how much more exquisite must have been the Queen of Sheba! Ah, if I had but Solomon’s opportunities!” All such comparisons are pointless and foolish; whether the Queen of Sheba or our next-door neighbor be the cause of discontent, eitheris equally futile. With the wise man, what he has does not cease to be enjoyable because someone else has something else.
Envy, in fact, is one form of a vice, partly moral, partly intellectual, which consists in seeing things never in themselves but only in their relations. I am earning, let us say, a salary sufficient for my needs. I should be content, but I hear that someone else whom I believe to be in no way my superior is earning a salary twice as great as mine. Instantly, if I am of an envious disposition, the satisfactions to be derived from what I have grow dim, and I begin to be eaten up with a sense of injustice. For all this the proper cure is mental discipline, the habit of not thinking profitless thoughts…
You can get away from envy by enjoying the pleasures that come your way, by doing the work that you have to do, and by avoiding comparisons with those whom you imagine, perhaps quite falsely, to be more fortunate than yourself.
