Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one's own ambitions.
In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.
We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers... Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.
No one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately, nor be a great lover at the first attempt; and in the interval between initial failure and subsequent success, in the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation. We suffer because we cannot spontaneously master the ingredients of fulfillment.
We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.
The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next.
In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well.
