"Healthy" envy. Opinion piece.

The ugly vice of envy has always interested me. When someone else has set a higher standard than us and risen above our heads, we feel bad. It's because we're envious—it's that simple!

The envious person feels attacked and harmed. They feel that another person, with their use of their own possessions, with the project they pursue, with their overwhelming personality, with their mere presence, or... with the fact of being born!, is humiliating them. It is from this humiliation, from this moral damage, that the hatred that characterizes the envious person is born.

Because the envious always hate. Envy is an uncontrollable and completely habitual reaction to those who are worth more, achieve more, or have more than us. Envy arises when, when comparing ourselves to them, we see ourselves as inferior.

When we're envious, we find it hard to recognize that the other person hasn't taken anything from us or harmed us. The other person has only diminished us.

If that hadn't existed... I would have lived in peace, content with what I had! That's what envy is: filthy envy! Who hasn't felt that way at some point?

Envy is deeply related to judgment. When we envy, we judge. If, after that judgment, we feel inferior, we have only two alternatives: hatred or admiration.

Unlike the admirer, the envious person doesn't want to have the things or qualities they envy: the envious person only wants to harm the envied person. Judicious people are prone to envy those who, as a result of luck (or the absence of bad luck) have achieved success or fortune with very little effort. Extravagance, ostentation, and luxury always greatly excite envy. It's reasonable to think that the spendthrift doesn't value the things they're squandering. Since they don't appreciate them, they don't deserve them, and it's unfair for them to be able to enjoy them.

Envy always tends to equalize: everyone at the bottom, but yes: everyone equal! In addition to prudence, envy also maintains a traditional and solid alliance with pettiness and idiocy. The imbecile—always focused and content with his useless work—cannot understand any ambitious project.

The shabby and miserable person can understand grand projects, but since they would be unworthy of their own, they don't want them to take off... That's why the entrepreneur always runs the risk of being envied. Someone who undertakes tasks beyond their usual will be envied. When someone—thanks to their ability to take risks—rises above others, they will rarely be admired.

I've observed that, at first, the emergence of envy always catches young entrepreneurs off guard. When they're barely starting to build their business, envy and jealous people appear... even infecting a loved one or someone close to them. For an entrepreneur to become a business owner, they must be able to recognize and get used to the presence of envy and dealing with jealous people.

But how can we achieve this? In my opinion, there's practically nothing the envied person can do. As a preventive measure, it's always advisable—with prudent people—to avoid waste, ostentation, and luxury. With wretches and imbeciles, it's much more difficult.

Perhaps the best thing to do is try to avoid them or lie to them about the true scope of our goals. What I do think is important is for the entrepreneur to understand and accept that the real problem is the envious person.

Envy is the only vice that does not cause any pleasure to the sufferer. It is the most absurd vice, and perhaps for that reason also the most common.

But what can be done to combat envy? The remedy for envy is simple and well-known: envy is eliminated when the envious person recognizes that they suffer from it (the same thing happens with idiocy). At that moment, envy turns into admiration. As easy to understand as it is difficult to practice: to free ourselves from envy, we must go through the lamentable and humiliating experience of recognizing that we suffer from it.

Envy always exposes the envious person to an additional risk: being found out! There's nothing more infamous or ridiculous than being labeled envious. That's why the fallacious and absurd concept of "healthy envy" was invented.

There's no such thing as "healthy envy"! "Healthy envy" is simply the name given to "filthy envy" by those who refuse to admit they've been infected by this disgusting vice. "Healthy envy" is simply the name given to envy by those who have been caught and refuse to be cured.

We have all at some point pretended to have “healthy envy.”

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