Poison Envy

On comparison, discontentment, and what envy is really telling you.

Let's start with an uncomfortable question: who do you envy?

Not admire. Not respect. Envy. That specific feeling that tightens in the chest when someone else gets the thing you wanted. Most traditions treat envy as something to suppress or overcome - one of the seven deadly sins, a poison to be purged.

This episode proposes something different. Not that envy is good - but that it is information. That before it curdles into resentment, it is pointing at something real: a want you haven't admitted, a value you've been ignoring, a direction you've been avoiding.

Social media has industrialised comparison. But the dissatisfaction it produces isn't really about other people. It never wa ...