Urban Therapy with Sun#51 Wishing it was me

I'm happy for so and so but I wish it was me. It must be nice. He/she got it like that. I wish I had it like that. My body is nice but I would love to have nice _____ like so and so. Nice car. Nice house. Great career. Marriage or relationship.

How many times have we expressed openly or silently about wishing we had an upgrade in some area of our lives similar to someone that we know or have seen? We all have whether we admit it or not. It doesn't have to be unhealthy to feel this way until the desire to upgrade becomes destructive or obsessive.

To many this sounds like jealousy but it is in fact closer to envy. Jealousy is dangerous because when someone is jealous of someone they want what another person has instead of that person having it. Envy is when you want something that another person has  without taking what they have away from them. This phenomenon probably wouldn't work well for  something that you previously owned like a man or a woman if you consider a person to be something that you own.

A better example of the differences between jealousy and envy could be that an envious person will understand that a pair of shoes has been manufactured by a company and that the company made hundreds or thousands of that shoe and the likelihood of seeing another pair of those shoes is likely. A jealous person will see those shoes as an exclusive pair made by a cobbler and that they are the only one in the world that should own that pair. Therefore they must take steps to remove them from the owner.

If you can see the logic in the two  you can see how destructive one can be over the other.

When we say that we wish it was me are we saying that what we have is not good enough or that we are not happy with what we have? For some the answer may be yes and for some the answer may be no but it's hard to fight the feeling at times either way.