Envy is a deprivation, really, a wanting, an emptiness characterized, say the shrinks, by feelings of inferiority, longing, resentment, and disapproval of the emotion itself. When I was young, I was suffocating with envy, I wanted the lives of everyone but me, I wanted to be everywhere but where I was.

The irony is that today, I love my life, and never wish to be anyone else, not even the authors who sell millions of books and make millions of dollars. But it’s not so easy. Those old feelings of envy resentment are still there, I only recently began to understand the degree to which envy is embedded in my consciousness, I guess there were more urgent problems for me to see, face and deal with.

We come into the world pure, a blank slate, a blank canvas, our parents the world shapes our consciousness, or being, it is a wicked tricky thing to paint a different picture. It can be done.

Envy is an awful and painful thing. Envy, I should say, is different from jealousy. Envy happens when we lack, or think we lack, a desired gift or attribute that someone else has. Jealousy occurs when something we already have – usually a relationship – is threatened by another person. Jealousy is marked by fear of loss, distrust, anxiety, and anger.

I have rarely, if ever, felt jealousy. I came to see a few years ago that the envy tormented me as a child had been internalized, I was feeling it all of the time without knowing it, sometimes you are just too close to your own feelings to see them. That has often happened to me. This is why is it valuable to seek help from professional people, they can help you see yourself and help you listen.

I was utterly deprived as a child, in ways I don’t need to discuss or care to discuss. You can be too closed or too open. I was achingly envious of other people, from comic book heroes to the Hardy Boys to my cousins. I wanted to be them, live with them, crawl into their skin. I felt inferior to them, I longed for the lives of others, I resented them for having what I did not have, and of course, I hated myself for feeling that way.

My envy will still, even now, rise up when I see others taking advantage of people by being false or dramatic in manipulative ways. If people are praised for things I consider unworthy. If people lie to themselves or others. If people are over  praised for things I don’t consider praiseworthy.

Am I right about these things? I don’t know, it’s really not for me to judge people, it is not my nature, it was born out of rage and terror. Why me?

Envy is a close cousin of jealousy, anger and resentment, they are in the same family of emotions. It is, I have learned, a sign of spiritual bankruptcy to covet  or judge the life of another person, a kind of thievery, a draining our own sense of self. I have learned to love my life, to never speak poorly of it, to accept its joys and travails. I am learning to accept the lives of others, even when they cause me to feel resentful, cynical, envious.

That is the antidote to envy, of course, and to so many other things: an honest and meaningful life.

I am learning to see envy as a symptom. In the way it is almost always a reflection of human imperfection when a dog misbehaves in a serious way, envy is a warning sign that I am failing myself,  that I need to fill up my cup, pay attention to me, appreciate my own spectacular nature. It is not about them, it is about me. Boundaries have become so important to me, it is not for me to save anyone, pity anyone, envy anyone.

Love is as much about acceptance as it is about anything else, and as I have come in recent years to find my life is envied and resented by many people, I am reminded again and again to never return the favor. And love has found me in many different ways.

When envy rears up, as it does from time to time, it is an awful feeling, a heavy weight. I feel shame and disgust for myself. I have only recently been giving it the attention and self-awareness it deserves. I mean to make it a ghost emotion, a flicker, not a feeling.  Self-awareness, I have come to learn, is the first  step to shedding  ways of thinking that are burrowed deeply into our consciousness. How can you grow as a human being if you don’t even know who you are? We can’t see ourselves, we have to look outwards to know who we are, to see our reflections in the many mirrors that are life.

These journeys into myself are healing, helpful, painful. They are a process. Like anger, you can’t just will envy out of your head, it is  a commitment, an undertaking.  You can’t just will yourself to forgive, it takes some time and effort, it is gradual. There are no miracles in the human consciousness. The path is not simple or clear, there are ups and downs, twists and turns, failures and setbacks. I didn’t used to know that I could do this, but I do know it now.

I have to see the envy, recognize it, take responsibility for it, began to think in a different way. I need to think about how and why it occurs, and reset myself  until it becomes an almost automatic thing. I know this can be done, I have done it before, particularly with fear and anger. It can take a long time, there are no easy steps. We can change the neural tracks in our mind.

I have lived with me for so long I can barely see me sometimes, but I intensely dislike the feeling of envy, I know it can never completely be erased or shed, it will always take some care and maintenance, but this is what self-awareness is. Summoning up the courage and the will to see myself honestly, to come out into the open and admit who I am, and to take full responsibility for being better.

We might be born perfect, but we don’t stay that way. All I can be is better.

We delude ourselves – and are deluded – into believing there are quick and magical epiphanies for important change. There are not. If I do the work, the rewards will be great. If I don’t, I will wallow in my own shortcomings, carry them with me to the end. I don’t want to end that way.

Every time I think I am nearing the end of this process, I learn that I am not near the end of this process, it will never be over, it cannot ever be over.

I see  now that this is not the curse of existence, but the joy and meaning of life.