Thich Nhat Hanh taught us that we don’t need external conditions to be happy - we can simply enjoy the experience of breathing in and breathing out. But how can we be happy when there’s people who are richer than us? Are better looking than us? That seem happier than we are?
I have a day job working in health and I really enjoy my career, it gives me a lot of fulfilment. It provides purpose, structure and I love the people I work with. But in the course of doing that job I came across someone who works in a high profile position who was much younger than me and I felt annoyed. I thought that they must have had a more privileged background or knew the right people, had the connections he needed to get where he was. I noticed that I felt envious of what this person had accomplished.
This was strange to me because I didn’t want his job, I didn’t want to be more senior, I just felt mildly resentful that he had seemed to get there so easily and in such a short space of time. I was unconsciously questioning whether this person deserved what they had or whether it was just the luck of the draw.
Its not an entirely unreasonable question. The circumstances that we’re born into and the path that we take along the way are down to good fortune as much as anything else. But that also implies that there are others that look at us and ask why we’ve had the good fortune to live the lives we’ve had. We might say to that person looking at us, “you don’t know how difficult it’s been, the obstacles I’ve had to overcome, its not been as easy as it looks.”
There’s a few important principles from the practice of mindfulness that can help us to change our perspective and overcome jealousy. The first is that everyone is suffering and everyone is doing the best they can. It may well be true that they’ve been much luckier in the genetic lottery or the circumstances of their lives - that doesn’t mean that they don’t have trauma, that doesn’t mean they aren’t afraid, or angry, or depressed. You can’t tell from the outside how happy someone really is. They may be struggling much more than you realise - we can reduce our jealousy by wishing them well: "may you be happy, may you be peaceful, may you see yourself through the eyes of understanding and compassion." Don't forget to direct those words toward yourself too!
Secondly, it’s important to accept jealousy rather than beating ourselves up for feeling it. A lot of the time when we notice that our mind is going down that path we feel guilty. There’s no need to - we can simply acknowledge that we’re having jealous thoughts, listen to what they have to say and allow them to leave. We can take the opportunity to understand what lies behind our envy. Jealousy is a very human emotion, its one of the factors that has driven human beings to achieve great things but it also causes suffering. We need to ask ourselves, what is it we are attached to that drives the feeling. What happened in our past that created the attachment to money, achievement, relationships. Sometimes the underlying insecurity can be passed down through many generations.
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