Aren't we all envious?

Before reading the article "Love your frenemy" by Sara Protasi, I didn't even realize all the various forms and relationships where envy can take place. I was confused but also felt a sense of clarity while reading this article. I sat on the word envy for a while and I just kept thinking about jealousy. 

I do realize that often you are envious of the people closest to you because you know so much about them and their accomplishments. However, when Protasi mentioned envy in a parent-child relationship I was so shocked. A lot of us were taught and shown that our parents are our greatest support, so how could they ever be envious of our success and big moments? The same goes the other way around, our parents have done so much for us so why would we ever be jealous of their success? This part in the article really confused me because I couldn't comprehend or try to explain envy in the parent-child relationship to myself. I am actually still confused and I would love to know your guys' opinions on this type of envy. Although I didn't understand envy in this type of relationship, I was able to clearly see it in the relationship between peers in school. Protasi states "comparing ourselves to others helps us to figure out whether we are talented, beautiful or successful". This made me immediately think of my relationship with my peers and how we all view each other. The article mentioned how swimmer's would compare themselves to other swimmer's. I thought about how since so many of us are taking the same courses, we try to stand out and see how we differ from each other. We look at each other's extra curricular and AP courses and see who's doing more. I remember when choosing schedules I always heard people saying "how many AP's are you taking?" instead of "what classes are you planning on taking next year"? I think a lot of us are stuck in a competitive mindset because we always feel the need to compare ourselves because no matter how much we are doing, if someone is doing more than us we immediately feel inferior to them and feel like we need to "catch up to them". We don't like to accept the fact that we all have different strengths and different amounts of things we are capable of doing.

The last thing in the article that I want to talk about is emulative envy. The article defines emulative envy as a type of envy where you are envious of someone because you want to and strive to have that something they have for yourself. Instead of not being happy for others for what they have, you are not happy for yourself and the lack of what you don't have in comparison to someone else. The article also mentions how emulative envy and admiration are different because Protasi states that with admiration "we are motivated to protect it, rather than to become it. It is an emotion that makes us feel good and that doesn’t involve a comparative judgment." By first glance at the word emulative envy, I thought it was a good thing even though I didn't know envy could even be a good thing. However, after viewing it in comparison to admiration I realized how unhealthy this type of envy (along with the general meaning of envy) really is. If we are motivated to do or get something because someone else has it, then we are not looking out for our own needs and what is important to us. We start losing sight of our personal goals and start getting focused on what we need to do to be better than others or look better to others. I personally find myself in this situation sometimes. At times, it is good to be motivated and driven by other people but we shouldn't be driven or too affected by others successes. Although we live in a competitive world, I still think there is a unique piece of it for all of us.

Now onto a more lighthearted note

My plans from the past two weeks:

decorating the band room for msboa w all the seniors

msboa day! sm fun but bittersweet because its my last one:(

finally got to try these yummy donuts😋😋