Contents
We find them more attractive, more loved, more gifted than we are. Where does this feeling come from that other people’s lives are always better than ours?
We learn very early that not everyone is equal. Kindergarten teachers tend to pay more attention to cute kids, while an elementary school teacher is more likely to prefer smart or efficient students.
In high school, we ourselves can’t help but admire the popular teenager. And our parents will often give us an example of a cousin who went through the competition to the university, while we beat the thumbs, not having the slightest idea about our future profession.
And now, as adults, we get angry, turning pale with envy, when people talk about the rapid career rise of a former colleague or, worse, our younger brother.
For many centuries the fate of the child was decided even before his birth: the shoemaker’s son inherited his father’s workshop, the eldest son of the landowner inherited the family estate. In today’s free society of individualists, we must constantly prove our worth.
And almost all of us dream of occupying a place that will bring us love, money, power, happiness.
But our accomplishments rarely match our ideals. The inability to change the situation, to realize one’s intention causes strong feelings. We are disappointed and at the same time feel tension, anxiety, hopelessness. Such frustration provokes hidden hostility and envy towards others who are more successful, more wealthy, happier…
Envy is a feeling familiar to many of us, and one of the most treacherous. “It is precisely this vice that we are least inclined to admit, because otherwise we would have to admit that we are unfriendly, evil and dysfunctional,” says writer Joseph Epstein.
St. Augustine describes in his Confessions the envy-filled look of a child on a younger brother clinging to his mother, who is breastfeeding him. If he could, he would have killed him, that’s clear. Even though he doesn’t breastfeed anymore. In fact, the younger brother does not steal anything from him. But here’s the constant of desire: we want what the other person has or wants.
Desire, as the philosopher René Girard explains, is imitative. The object of our desire is our own ideal. This is the reason why we constantly compare ourselves to others: we never know clearly who we are or what we desire. So we rely on someone else like us to find the answer to this riddle. But we never find the right answer.
“Those who are little loved think they deserve their fate”
What prevents some of us from respecting ourselves, fulfilling our desires, asserting ourselves?
Children’s experience interferes. Most likely, such a person grew up between a depreciating mother and an indifferent father. Later, he began to admire those who disdain him, and meet, as if by chance, partners and employers who do not recognize his value. Such people are not loved enough, and they lose in advance.
Why are they convinced that they are born losers?
The child cannot imagine that his parents are wrong. If they are not interested in him, then he is not worthy of it, the child thinks so. He feels that he is being treated unfairly, but cannot convince himself of this: deep down, he believes that he deserves such treatment.
How to escape from this inner prison?
I remember the story of one of my patients, a very good woman. When her husband saw that she was beginning to realize her worth, he vowed not to neglect her again. One day in the session she was able to formulate her decision to divorce, but suddenly she changed her mind abruptly and stopped psychoanalysis. So it’s not enough to know that we have done nothing to deserve mistreatment. You have to feel it, deeply understand it.
Happiness is not so contagious
The success of glossy magazines is partly due to the fact that they exploit an aggressiveness that no one admits to. Journalists never forget to show us the stars and those in power in the worst moments of their lives: during a divorce, after the loss of loved ones, during periods of alcohol or drug addiction.
“It is not enough to be happy, it is also necessary that other people be unhappy” – this is the thought that visits our mind when we are consumed by envy. Contrary to the stereotype, happiness isn’t all that contagious.
A study by sociologists from the University of Utah Valley (USA) shows that information about the successes and joys of our friends on the social network Facebook spoils our mood1. “Why them and not me?” we involuntarily ponder, not suspecting that perhaps our friends have embellished the situation.
Fortunately, there is a cure for this virtually provoked despondency: spend less time at the computer, communicate more, participate in charity.
This will make sure that other people have more serious reasons to be dissatisfied with fate.
The notion that we are less successful than other people has something to do with an optical illusion. “I don’t understand how my girlfriends manage to do everything with work, a child, shopping, cleaning,” says 28-year-old Nika, mother of two-year-old Alik. “I’m completely exhausted.”
Does Nicky have proof that her friends are better at coping with a similar life situation, that they don’t get as desperate as she does? Unlikely, but still…
“One of the most common fantasies is that we transfer our situation to another person and imagine that it is easier for him to solve it than for us, that he has no shadow zone, no unconscious,” comments psychoanalyst Olivier Douville.
The life of another person seems to be more successful than ours, by default. Is it really? Someone earns a lot, but perhaps his true ideal is to experience passion for a man or woman, or he dreams of becoming an artist, a poet or a freelance artist.
Imagination is stronger than reality
The competitive atmosphere in which we live and work maintains our subjective feeling that someone else is always better than us in life. This notion encourages us to see the other as a rival rather than an ally.
“I note,” says the psychoanalyst, “that success is achieved, for example, not by the most brilliant students, but by those who are best adapted to this inhumane competitive system. Intellectually complex and emotionally more vulnerable individuals are certainly not doomed to be left on the sidelines, but their life path tends to be more chaotic.”
However, the feeling that we never succeed is not always the result of a mistake in our imagination. Sometimes we limit ourselves by choosing criteria for success so strict that we simply do not dare to do anything. A quiet inner voice whispers to us: “If you are not in the top 10, you are nobody” or “If you do not win this person’s love, you are good for nothing.”
“This strategy is unconsciously chosen by those of us who, in childhood, had to be silent and hushed up in order to protect a depressed or sick parent from the worries,” notes Olivier Douville. “At the age when other children are naughty and naughty, they were forced to suppress their aggressive impulses.
And as a result, they never learned to control or direct them. Later, such “unexpressed” aggressiveness turns against them so violently that it paralyzes their will to a successful and interesting life.
The fulfillment of desires for some of us is unconsciously accompanied by a sense of mortal threat.
After all, after this there will be nothing left to hope for, life will be over. Of course, we are talking about fantasies; as soon as imagination takes over our mind, it becomes stronger than reality.
To return to a flexible view of the world, Olivier Douville encourages us to ask ourselves two of the simplest questions: “What do I want to achieve? What is my desire?” And he explains: “It is impossible to get rid of an envious attitude towards another person, ignoring yourself, your needs.”
When we become aware of our real desires, competition and comparison cease to play the role of blocking mechanisms. They can even become the driving forces that push us to be better than we were. On the way to realizing our desires, we may notice that the success that is valued in society does not captivate us at all. And let’s not forget: to live means to inevitably fail from time to time.
“The real hero is not the superman who always wins, but the one who loses with dignity,” confirms Olivier Douville. “The most beautiful victory is not one in which we triumph over others, but one that allows us to conquer our fantasies of omnipotence, allows us to accept our failures and not despair.”
1 «Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking», 2012, vol. 15, № 2.