Honestly, I rarely get jealous, and when jealousy strikes, I always use the mantra, When you play the compare game, no one wins. Rarely in life is one person's total sum of life experiences that much better than another person's. Certainly there are those that face far more than their fair share of sorrow and those that seem to experience more than their fair share of success too, but in general as I look around, I think, in the end, people have about the same total amount of good fortune and bad.
One example that led me to this conclusion was a friend and her husband who seemed to have more struggle than success in their lives. Then as they and their children aged, that struggle turned into a great deal of good fortune. When they were surviving the tough times, I was having a lot of good times, and when they were enjoying life, I was working extra hard and struggling a bit. We will have tough times and we will have good times. Rather than jealousy, I want to be supportive of people in both good and bad times with the knowledge that we all have our turns for both good fortune and not-so-good fortune in life. Onward.
