A brown skinned youth climbs in my car and tells me in a tone affected by a sad experience:” please drive me quick. Such hatred! Such injustice! How come there’s so much envy mister driver?” surprised by the spoken words, I try to find the reasons of his suffering.
What is Envy?
A balloon of uncontrolled feelings inflated to the max with the toxic air of prejudice towards the ascension to the celebrity top list of those around us, also with the way we look at someone’s unseen talents that display their capabilities shadowing our own accomplishments, or with the obsessive desire to obtain your close one’s benefits… and at some point, that balloon bursts with the sting from the lack of support from the majority. It’s seed appears in discussions carried by village “heroes” at a street corner, it grows in the mind of the one avoided by the cheers of the ones with headscarves instead of togas and a crooked cane instead of a scepter, “justified” to appreciate the subject’s role through the filter of years spent behind the yoke of the pair of beasts of burden. It’s bitter tasting fruits hang heavily between the plans woven in the thick darkness found in the depths of a sick heart, and are sold for spare change in the tin fare wanted by those without anything to do.
What effects bear this weed of the mind?
Large scale conflicts that filled many pages of history were triggered by the spark of the idea that a certain human race might be superior to others. In this manner, the toxic thought to exterminate the “competition” materialized in pools of blood, orphaned children, “inferior” civilizations being ruined. We you look out the window fogged up by rickety reasoning, you show a frown to the happy member of the family that rests on the porch of their own achievements through work, diligence, honesty, judging the motivation not the acts, followed by a twisted examination of reality.
Promoting disloyal competition leads to unjust wins, tasting the joy of success in the detriment of breaking rules. Painting on the canvas of the human portrait the shade of a scarlet background suggesting unbridled wrath, but a few yellow spots expressing the disease of mistrustful couples, we sadly gaze the wider picture of a conflicted world.
What is the antidote?
Although we speak of complex feeling, envy dilutes a clear thinking. Maybe they think it is beneath their dignity if they admit that they were poisoned through the erroneous application of calculation formulas regarding functions and derivatives from the internal space’s geometry, penciling an error filled sketch in interpreting the size of some reasons behind those apparently unacceptable methods. They say that the best defense is offense. Instead of suspiciously looking at the progress, qualities and talents of those around us, we could admire them instead.
Actually, envy is a matter of choice. The effect is obvious in the words of a person that studied human relations years on end: “A calm heart gives life to the body, But jealousy is rottenness to the bones.”
The young man leaves the stressful area with his departure, and shows gratitude for the given understanding. In reality, it’s not the color of the skin of the level of education that represents the determining factors for becoming an altruistic person.
