There was this guy I admired during high school. I admired him so much, I envied him.
I pushed to be like him, to beat him.
I tried to dress better than he did. To get better grades. To have prettier girlfriends.
I weighed my success against his success.
I even wished him bad luck. To lose big races in swimming, To lose student body races.
He knew this. It irritated him.
That bothered me. Although I wanted to beat him, I always had hoped to be close friends with him.
There are two lessons from that emotional mess.
One, envy is healthy. Comparing and competing with someone who is clearly better than you helps you to become better. You want to be on the playing field of life with those who are clearly superior to you. The result is that you get better. And That happened to me. I improved.
Two, there will be times in your quest to overachieve those you’ve envied that it won’t happen. For some that envy turns into jealousy, which if not overcome turns into spite. Spite digs into your psyche. It distorts your sense of reasoning. This turns into a hidden vendetta. The only problem is that as time passes the person who is the target of your vendetta has most likely moved on. You too have moved on. After a while you forget, but your subconscious never forgets. Years later, the subconscious pushes this vendetta to the surface, but your conscious mind rejects it, because it can’t understand what the subconscious is trying to do. An uncomfortable tension exists. In time, tension turns into anxiety.
You may never find out why you are suffering from anxiety. But, it’s there and there it stays. This is life as a human.
There are two remedies to constant anxiety:
A. Get so old you start to forget everything. I don’t recommend it.
B. You develop a new passion in life. Finding passion a second time around takes a long, long time.
Going to a therapist isn’t always the answer. If you don’t know the facts lodged deep in your unconscious, how can you expect an outsider to know. Buck up. We’re all in this sticky mess together. Life is a mirror.
If your anxiety is crippling you mentally, go to your doctor and have him prescribe an antidepressant. If that doesn’t help, you’ll need to be hospitalized. Life is unfair at that point.