We had company over a few days ago. How’s that for a throwback term to when your cable remote had a wire — “company” as a term for guests. So we’ve got some friends and family hanging out and the topic of jealousy comes up. Not in the adulterous context so much as the general coveting sense of the word.
I don’t talk about envy or jealousy much here.
(I wasn’t much of a Gin Blossoms fan, but I gotta admit this 90s tone is my comfort animal)
Yinh thinks I’m seemingly immune to jealousy. If she had to name one superpower of mine that’s the one. That’s a wild claim but her misperception is understandable. I just don’t get jealous of the things that are commonly referenced as objects of jealousy — wealth, freedom, abs.
I chose my words carefully — “things that are commonly referenced as objects of jealousy” — because the conversation we had with company re-framed my understanding of jealousy. These external objects are not the root of jealousy unless you stopped maturing once you got your driver’s license. I mean as a kid I genuinely thought the world was unfair because f’n George had the GI JOE aircraft carrier.
This simplistic “I am mad because someone has a bigger X” is a fake idea. That’s self-evident. If jealousy were that basic, everyone would be seething all the time. We reserve envy for people we deem to be in the same category as us — similar job, ability, circumstance. If you are jealous of royals you should just go all-in on reincarnation religion and give up orgasms in this life. But for most people whose jealousy stems from even a shred of just-world delusion, there are a couple of ideas worth internalizing.
First is a technique that forms a cornerstone of my own yin-yang sense of reality — every strength is a weakness.
You think too much. You don’t think enough.
You are OCD about to-do lists. You’re a messy professor.
You’re indistractable. You have self-diagnosed ADHD.
In one context, you are a force, in another, your mother thinks you’re inconsiderate.
If every personality trait is some version of the “Wife and My Mother-in-Law” illusion, then you can never get what someone else has without having to make bargains you aren’t aware of. It’s the whole “unless you want to trade your life for someone else’s, don’t bother wishing for à la carte upgrades”.
I don’t know when exactly I internalized this but I’d guess it was ~ 20 years ago. I read Neil Peart’s Ghost Rider, a soul-searching memoir of his 50k+ mile motorcycle ride in the aftermath of losing his wife to illness and teen daughter to a car accident within 9 months. While whatever made him one of the greats had nothing to do with those tragedies, the sheer weight of that book made its mark — I have no idea what others carry.
I don’t know what’s in store for me, but my life, both its interior and exterior, joy and suffering, is all I get. If you can’t find peace with what it finds, what you invite consciously or unconsciously by virtue of living in your body, you can’t even inhabit the only thing you get. If you unify your power with acceptance, there is no oxygen for jealousy to burn. Life is deeply unfair but you are still responsible until you are, once again, dirt.
The second idea, the one surfaced by our conversation, is that jealousy is a gift. Not as fuel, although perhaps that works for some. [Many exceptional achievers claim this but they are also telling on themselves. Not that they care and why should they, who am I to judge? But this type of fuel to be used as anything more than a seasonal nitro boost leads to far more Pyrrhic flameouts than glorious moon landings.]
Jealousy is a shortcut. A forced examination that will save you time in the long run. It will be clear what I mean in a moment, but I didn’t see it this way until that conversation where Yinh recounted her interview with improv comedian Holly Mandel.
The exchange:
Holly Mandel: While I was going through the Groundlings, a couple of people, including one of my at-the-time closest friends and almost constant writing partner. She got on Saturday Night Live, and I remember feeling I knew something was happening the night that SNL was in the audience to see a few people.
It could have been any of us that got called in for an audition, but she was definitely on a short list, I think. I remember feeling her energy that night—she was very focused on something beyond just the show. And I was just interested in the show. I just wanted to have fun on stage, and I remember there being a different energy there. I didn’t have that.
And then she got on SNL, and I remember being so conflicted. It was one of the first times I really dealt with such a deep sense of jealousy. And I’ve since come to understand that jealousy is actually still a gift—it just means somebody has something that tells you you want something of that same caliber. It doesn’t mean you want what they have. But I didn’t know that at the time, so it was just this icky emotion.
It was fascinating to watch her career go, which was fantastic and she was wonderful on the show, and to start to learn that that feeling of failure was really about having to trust that it just wasn’t for me. At the time, I thought it meant I had FOMO, that I wasn’t picked. But later in life, I got to look back and say, Oh, my personality would never have been able to handle it. At the time, I wasn’t built for that. I wasn’t designed for that.
And that energy on stage showed me that she was focused—she wanted to go beyond just the Groundlings. It was a great reminder that you may not see the lesson now, but you can trust you’ll get it at some point. And when I did, it felt really nice.
Yinh: So what did you do with that feeling—with that icky feeling—at the time?
Holly Mandel: Pretending it wasn’t there. And probably acting out of it at times that weren’t lovely. All those messy choices you make. I don’t know how many people listening to the podcast have been around people who get famous really fast. I’m sure there are different versions of that in everybody’s life.
But fame is weird—suddenly the whole world knows the person who used to be your roommate, and they’re living this magical life you were one degree away from. So it’s a growth moment to really learn how to navigate that with grace, and again, have this bigger trust that something else is meant for you. It just hasn’t hit yet.
Maybe this moment is a lesson in: how do you handle being around people who are starting to get their dreams when you haven’t had yours yet? How do you handle that? I think that’s a huge lesson.
Yinh: A lot of my listeners are in asset management, just because that’s the business I’ve been working in. Many are friends and family, but I think there’s a similar dynamic with money instead of fame.
So many people follow the same financial trajectory, and all of a sudden one great mentor, one great job, or one great bonus puts a few extra zeros next to their name. It changes a lot. But for those who don’t get it, you start to question: Am I not good enough? Am I smart enough? What can I do better?
It feels like failure if you don’t get it. But it also lights a fire under you. It motivates you if you do want that, and it helps you question if you really do want it.
Holly Mandel: One hundred percent. And I’ve seen the underbelly of all of that. It isn’t as glamorous as it looks. That’s another growth moment: asking, Is that really the thing you want? Or does it just look good in the magazine?
The mature framing of jealousy is that it’s about you, not them. When it spotlights that you don’t want to do what it takes. You wanna play around but still get the prize? Jealousy reveals the true price of the prize.
The faster you can “muck” your miswants and double-down on your true wants, the faster you can get to burning the inevitable anxieties on the right path rather than wasting your energy on the wrong one. The jealousies you encounter on the right path are distance markers. They allow you to measure your pace vs what is possible which you can then scale for you. They are opportunities to renew your resolve.
It’s the yin-yang thing again. Jealousy is self-sabotage or self-knowledge. Wield it well.