Envy

By Vidya Ramamoorthy

ENVY

People turn purple with rage, red with shame, and green with envy at least once a day, and more than a handful of times a week. It’s statistically proven. Ok, maybe it’s not, but that doesn’t make it untrue, and I’m sure you could vouch for that. Shades of these emotions certainly make life more interesting, but while no one wants to lead a boring life, maybe living sinfully isn’t the solution. It’s one thing to talk about the evil effects of these …! GASP! vices, and a whole another thing to live with them.

Envy. 

Something we’ve all befriended, ever  since we saw our neighbor propping his Mac Book against the dashboard of his BMW, or ever since we secretly wished we too,could put away a cheeseburger and fries along with a chocolate latte, and still look like that amazingly fit friend (everyone has one of these friends, everyone).

Envy.

It’s never pretty, and sometimes, it gets downright ugly. Although it might be a bit of an ego boost when you know someone secretly envies you, it’s not so much fun when above mentioned person decides to indulge in a little behind- the- back slander or _______(insert backstabbing activity of choice here). After all, ‘Greatness inspires envy, envy engenders spite, and spite spawns lies.’

Unless your skin is as thick as dragon hide and you are unaffected by the petty crimes the world and its denizens commit around you, you might want to square your shoulders and learn to deal with it.

Look for the good in everything, and also teach others how to do it. More often than not, green eyed monsters are usually big warm marshmallows inside, but with a baggage of low self esteem attached. Counting our blessings and remembering that each of us is unique is an amazingly simple gift we forget to give ourselves. We tend to get so involved in marking our win against the others on that giant imaginary scoreboard, that we forget that we aren’t even in a race.

This season, we stop the sins.

This season, we turn our wasted minutes into useful ones as we finally join that salsa class, or get that A on our report card because we’ve kept ourselves busy and wonderfully so.

This season, we lock up our envy, and give that friend of ours a high five while falling into step beside her during her morning jog. Maybe we even pass Mr. Hotshot neighbour and his car, enroute, and flash him a smile. And just maybe, that classmate who always picked on us for being a Harry Potter nerd will ask us if we’d like to go watch Deathly Hallows: Part 1 with them next week. After all, what goes around comes around.

This season, we shed the green.