Is this moment just right, or is it going to kill me?

Some of us are neglecting to live the life that we have because we’re overly focused on the life we yearn for.

We simply want things to be other than they are.

And not that there is an inherent problem with wanting anything. The question is, at what point does our desire to attain hurt our ability to connect?

Louie once made a beautiful distinction during an interview about jealousy, telling his longtime friend the following:

It takes a good friend to stay with you in bad times, but it takes a good friend to stay with you in good times. Everybody needs support, and if you see me doing something and you have a hard time coming to terms with it because of your own life, you’re letting me down as a friend. You’re being a shitty friend by being jealous.

Which one of your relationships has been most tainted by envy? Is there someone whose life or career have you coveted and built resentment towards them as a result?

Personally, this was a habit that used to trip me up, but in an unusual way. It wasn’t the remarkable people who stirred my envy, it was the average ones. Which led to becoming jealous of other people for being happy about normal things being enough for them.

They were perfectly content with their very average lives, and some part of me resented the fact that my personality didn’t worked the same way.

The other thing about envy us, it runs both ways. We may harbor zero jealousy towards others, and yet, secretly want others to envy us.

Look how cool my life is. Why aren’t you more impressed with me yet?

Byron’s book about how to stop seeking love has an eloquent passage about this inversion. She admits there was a time in her life where she wanted people to see her with rays of golden light streaming out from her like an angel and bask in her wonderfulness and be a little envious that they hadn’t attained it yet.

These are the irrational thoughts we think when our nostalgia for the future takes over. And the sad part is, this envy hurts our ability to connect in the present.

Because it’s hard to feel love for someone when we’re obsessing over why we deserve their life more than they do. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Do you do what you do because you love doing it, or because you saw someone else do it and you just want what they had?