Why Be Envious of Anyone?

When you really stop to think about it, does it ever make sense to be envious of someone else? It think the only logical answer is no.

To begin with, we can only see part of what's going on in someone's life at any given time. We may see the good things that are happening to them as well as all the stuff they might have, but we have no way to feel what they feel or know about their potential pain. We also might be so focused on the positive things in their life that we might miss or ignore the negative things, which may be far more numerous.

In addition, we don't know what those "positive" things may have cost them or what they have had to endure in order to keep them. It might be a price that we would never be willing to pay. For example, we might be tempted to be envious of someone who lives in an expensive home and owns expensive automobiles. However, would we also want to be so deep in debt that we have to worry about where our next meal is going to come from, as is often the case for them?

Also, just because a person seems to be doing well now, doesn't mean it has always been that way for them. For all we might know, most of their life up to that point could have been a miserable existence - a life that could we could not have tolerated.

Those are just a few things to consider the next time you are tempted to be envious of someone.