Envy has a public relations problem. It sits with greed and wrath on the list of deadly sins, and we are taught to feel ashamed of ourselves the moment we notice it within us. We are eager to tell others that jealousy is a bad look on them, but sit in quiet discomfort when the same feeling broods inside of us. So is immediately dismissing it with shame really the right reaction or is our heart trying to tell us something?
Nowadays, many young people report feeling lost and lacking a sense of purpose. A recent study from Harvard's Graduate School of Education found that 58% of Gen Z reported "little or no sense of meaning or purpose" in the previous month.[1] Any moment of discomfort can be swiped away, scrolled past, or drowned in a feed keeping us from feeling it for too long. Envy is one of those uncomfortable feelings, and one of the easiest to flinch from.
I would argue that in these times, it's even more important to feel envious and take time to sit in it. Fundamentally, it's impossible to feel envious of something you don't want. Envy hurts because it cuts to our core, exposing our true desires and our unmet needs. By suppressing it, we ignore what matters to us and do a disservice to ourselves. Instead, I think we should seek to break down what it is about someone else that we truly covet and use that to guide us. To do that, we have to decouple what they have from who they are.
We notice what people have long before we notice who they are. Your high school classmate who seems to have a more successful career than you despite going to a no-name college. The girl from that one night at the club who never has a boring weekend and is always invited to cool events or going abroad. That dorky dude you follow on Instagram who somehow manages to date women out of his league while you've been swiping through Hinge for 2 years.
Personally, I've recently been envious of 2 people. My coworker, who is the same age as me but got promoted a year ago. A 17 year old high school junior I met at a conference who is already contributing to a field I am interested in and seemingly a shoe-in for any college. In both cases, I envy that they accomplished more at a younger age than I did. However, success rarely happens in a vacuum. When I look at the traits that they had, it's not hard to then trace it to their successes.
My coworker is extremely disciplined and displays an incredible ability to focus. Every day, he runs 5 miles to work, plugs in his earbuds, locks in for 8 hours straight, and then runs 5 miles back. He takes his lunch at his desk, and I've NEVER seen him on his phone.
Despite his youth, the 17 year old understands the importance of urgency. Instead of spending his summer vacationing or playing video games, he is working 70 hour weeks doing AI safety research. At the conference, he was taking advantage of the ability to book a 1:1 with any attendee to hopefully leverage into a position at a frontier AI lab before even graduating high school. Determined, but not cocky, I couldn't help but be impressed at his drive.
We can't choose to be born rich, attractive, or intelligent. But discipline isn't inherited, and having a sense of urgency isn't gated behind gene expression. When I envy my coworker, I'm not really envying his promotion, I'm envying the focus that earned it, and focus is something I can practice. When I envy a seventeen-year-old, I'm not envying his age. I'm envying that he understood, years before I did, that time is the one resource you can't get back.
Our envious nature seems to pick up on things before we do. Stripped of shame, it turns out to be the most honest map we have of our own unmet wants. The careers, the money, and the relationships are just the destinations. The traits one has to possess to obtain them are the directions.