The ENVY Poll

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Enervating
Negativity
Vexes
YOU!

Envy is a noun denoting a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else's possessions, qualities, or luck:
she envied her coworker's effortlessly sexy figure; he envied his coworker's effortless charisma.
there are benign forms which are at least somewhat wistfully aspirational, and malignant forms which are all about schadenfreude [elation at the harm befalling others who are perceived to be haughty and privileged]. this poll is about the former.
WHO HERE has ever felt envy for another person? WHY did you feel this envy? and btw if you ever do feel the malignant form, I wanna hear about it. I gots to know. thank you in advance

I will start- I envy people who have superior genes which allow them to be effortlessly fit and still eat pizza all the time.

I don't know if I really envy anyone because that would be pointless. What does envy accomplish?
However I do admire people who can speak effortlessly with perhaps a nice David Attenborough-like accent.

then you might like your countryman B9, he has a broadcaster's rich and cultured baritone and facility with expression. and it is not so much about what envy "accomplishes" per se, but about how one feels about one's place in this world.

I think I'm confused by envy. I wish I could speak without stuttering but I don't feel resentful of other people for having that quality.

that is the malignant [schadenfreude] form of envy, rather than the benign form expressed in this poll- e.g., "I envy my neighbors because they are retired and here I am still having to wage-slave at the mill." [IOW "I wish I was retired also!" NOT "I wish they would get smashed by an falling airplane engine!"]

I'm lucky, my envy neurons must be undeveloped. There's some slight dwarfish twinge, not totally unpleasant, then that's it. Not much pride either.

Vanity is a different matter, I have special dispensation from the Divine for that one.

ummm.. does that mean you have lots of vanity or little?

Soo... where's the ice cream?

I don't know if I envy people. Like with my brother, he had a lot of things handed to him because he's a genius, but I never wanted to be him, and I certainly wouldn't trade lives for the world. But I did resent that I grew up in his shadow and wish that people hadn't seemingly overlooked me so much. I was always "dreddnott's sister." I was never my own self.

When I look at other people who have things I wouldn't mind having, that's about as far as it goes. I think, "That would be cool to have." But that's about it and it doesn't happen very often.

it wasn't just that I envied other people their fancy googaws, but the totality of their lives of ease relative to my struggles.

I see slim and effortlessly fit people eating ice cream and cinnabons with nary a care, while I huff and puff and sweat my brains out 6 days a week yet just LOOK at a sweet and STILL gain weight. it ain't FAIR!

Wow. You know, I can't even process that. Like, I know what you're saying but I can't even identify the feeling of envy. When people are retiring at work, I think, "they're retiring." I don't attach any feeling to it. I don't wish I was retiring too. I certainly don't wish an aeroplane would fall on their house.

Way to go for pointing out a whole deficit in my emotions.

I can't actually do that because I see other people as having issues of their own. I'm used to mine, I don't know what theirs would be like and if they would be better or not. A lot of people also hide any trouble they're going through. I suppose that thought process only works if I'm thinking in terms of switching actual bodies/lives though...

I dunno. I guess I've just gotten used to who I am and my situation enough to want to just work with it...



True... that does suck. I can eat 1000 calories a day and not lose weight. My husband misses one meal and he's down a few pounds, lol. Although, I think as he gets older, the more likely it is that he'll have to work it off a lot more.

I think you are just more evolved [spiritually] than I am.

wow you have evolved to where I need to be.

that sounds like an equalizer [aging] to me.

Lol, I think I'm just really adverse to change!

^ I think my emotions are still crawling out of the primordial soup.