Considering ... Envy, Sun/Mon 9/18-19/2016

I don't feel envy when someone else has good fortune. If my next door neighbor won the lottery, I'd congratulate him/her and wish him/her continued good fortune. That's just who I am. On another hand (since I no longer believe there are "only" two ways to look at things), there are times I envy someone's ability to be considerably more diplomatic than I know how to be. I don't see a problem with that type of envy. Sometimes I'll study how it was the person was able to handle a situation in which I'd have blown up, or at least have handled it worse. I was in a meeting a couple of weeks ago where one member of the committee had a grievance, which sounded to me like a personal one. He challenged the chair of the committee about something, and it really and truly sounded to me that he was hurt that he had not been chosen for a particular task (approximately a dozen, maybe half a dozen, people were chosen out of 50 or 100 who applied). I really thought that if I'd been chairing the meeting and had been one of the two people who chose the dozen or half dozen people for the task that I would have been royally ticked off by this one man's vehemence concerning "how" the individuals had been chosen. It truly sounded to me like he was angry that HE wasn't one of the dozen or half dozen. However, the chair of the committee let him speak for as long as he needed to, and she listened to everything he said, and told him that it wasn't the first time he was raising this issue (so I learned that he had already gone to her and/or to the other person responsible for choosing the dozen or half dozen) and that they (she, the chair, and he, the member of the committee on which I too serve) had already talked about it. She kept reassuring him that he was heard, and he kept not hearing it (in my opinion, at least). I envied her ability to keep her cool throughout his practically tirade. It's not something I am good at. I tend to dismiss such objections as self-serving rather than in the best interests of the group as a whole. I saw it as something she is able to do (and do well) that I don't think I have the ability to do, let alone do well. I watched her carefully, to see if I could learn from her. I think this kind of envy is positive.