Is envy good?

The words "envy","jealousy" often have a negative connotation. It is called the green eyed monster as people believe that it can ruin friendships, relationships and marriages.It can create enemies out of friends. And more often than not, a person jealous of you; resents you silently, tries to find illogical flaws in everything you say or do, and will never let go of any opportunity to put you down.

I used to believe that envy is something to be stayed away from as it destroys you in the end. But in a book that I recently read, there was a statement that said,"If we envy someone for all the right reasons, we're half way to wisdom." This forced me to rethink my stand on envy. If you think deeper, you don't envy a person on the face of it, you envy certain traits and behaviors that a person possesses. And more often than not, the reason for your envy is that you don't have those traits or behaviors but would like to have them.

Admiration is a positive manifestation of envy. In both the cases there is some underlying trait that we wish we had. Perfect understanding of our jealousy leads to admiration and if channeled properly may even lead us to modifying our behavior to achieve what we desired in the first place.

In the same book there is another statement that says, "Jealousy, like the flawed love that bears it, has no respect for time or space or wisely reasoned argument. Jealousy can raise the dead, with a single, spiteful taunt, or hate a perfect stranger for nothing more than the sound of his name." In a way it is true. Envy can be the most unreasonable and illogical of things.

Like anything else in life, envy can be good or bad for us. It all depends on our perspective and our attitude and that can make us the person that we are or the person that we will eventually become.