A:2

As a kid, I once had made a comment how I was envious of the neighbour kid. She got to travel to Spain on summer vacation and swim in the ocean and do all sorts of fun stuff. My summer that year was quite uneventful and I spent it riding my bike and roaming around the forest. I did enjoy myself, but I was envious of the neighbour kid still. Why should she be taken to cool and exciting foreign countries and experience things I only had seen on tv and in magazines while I was stuck at home with the same scenery, the same things I did everyday, the same people and nothing particularly exciting? The funny thing about this is that next year it was a really busy summer for me and my family. We drove to Denmark, various festivals around in Sweden and Norway and we weren’t home very much for a few weeks. The neighbour kid had stayed home all summer and only had a weekend with her family camping in Sweden. When I came back home again shortly before school started I complained to my mother and said that next year I wanted to do as our neighbours and stay at home all summer. I was envious again, and thinking back on that makes me cringe a bit. I have realised it wasn’t as much as the travelling or experiencing new things etc. It was more about feeling left out, not having the same things “everyone else” had. It is very humbling to realise envy within myself. I feel small, I feel silly and I feel ungrateful for the things I already have in my life. It’s an ugly feeling and one I am trying to weed out as soon as I can notice it creeping into my thoughts. Life feels better without it and feeling gratitude for what I have and appreciate it makes things more meaningful to me. I have also found joy in being happy for other people and the things that they have. I am genuinely happy when I see someone having something good in their life.