How do you feel about people who have everything in life?

[ZardozOmega]

Colossal envy and anger. Coming across people who have it better than me can ruin my entire day. Silly, I know.

 

[Shadowrider]

The Buddha taught that existence is suffering. Remember, the Buddha was once a wealthy prince who had all the things you mention. It brought him no happiness when he saw how everyone suffers and dies.

Yeah, this is very good food for thought.
AFAIK his father did not want him to experience poverty, old age or disease and did everything so that Siddhartha saw only wealth and happiness around him. Maybe this is why he got so shocked when by chance, he saw first a poor beggar, thereafter an old man and a funeral procession? I assume these shocking experiences motivated him in giving up his status & wealth to seek refuge from all the suffering.
(I am not a Buddhist but used to read many Theravada texts and they are really good - worth to take into consideration! I especially like that there's no need to "believe" anything without criticism here. Very good stuff and it makes sense.)

 

[megafire]

usually ambivalent. people with everything still have problems, they are just different problems... even if that problem is deciding which job offer to take. subjectively less significant than my own, but who am i to devalue that?

i get jealous when i see people out with friends because im not really capable of making or keeping them but im learning to stop caring so much

 

[Avyn]

I feel jealous and sort of disgusted, not like I want them to be suffering and in pain but that are these type of people that tell you to just move on and get out of the phase when you tell them you're suffering from a mental illness.
They will never be able to understand what we go through.

It gets worse when their parents give them EVERYTHING and get spoiled, like man why can't this happen to me?
Why am I the one with shit parents and have to go through all the pain to just be FREE? And if you do complain about your parents, hahaha, they will say you don't appreciate your family and that a parent would neeever harm their child. OR they complain about their parents when they're the ones getting everything they want, but still have some bullshit to complain about.

 

[GenesAndEnvironment]

I am soon at the point where I will be completely unable to compare myself to others. I realized perhaps five years ago that comparisons didn't make logical sense unless it serves a function like hiring or mate selection. Not because they hurt feelings, but because it's logically nonsensical. "That person has a different genetic profile and this profile has interacted with the external in order to produce result X, I have another genetic profile and my own interactions with the world that differ so now I will produce an emotional response to cause pain to myself."

I hammer this into my tiny brain at every opportunity I get, soon I will be free from my own self-judgements.

 

[Makko]

I used to be envious of rich people, especially as a poor student, but then I started getting some money of my own and I'm sort of mellowing out. Feels pretty good.

"Having it all" tends to include having relationships, friends, marriages, children and all that. None of that for me please, I'll just take the money and then I don't have to feel any kind of way about other people at all. At some point I'll no longer be financially dependent on them, and no longer envious of them having things I want but can't get. That's the perfect state to be in.

 

[Lmd]

Nothing. Why should I care or feel something if it doesn't affect me.

 

[LastFlowers]

Well, tbf, they make me feel a thousand times worse than I already do.
To have people suffering so terribly forced around those who actually benefit from life and can enjoy living..it's just pure torture.
And it is usually those same people who are the most dismissive of our desire to end our pain, and the source of our pain itself.
They won't acknowledge the gigantic discrepancy and imbalance from one human existence to the next, as to not have to face, or own up to their own privileges.

You wouldn't know because you would be too busy enjoying life.
If - as you are saying yourself - feel bitter angry and envious towards people that never harmed you, I am pretty sure your empathy and compassion would be even lower than those who you accuse of.


I am fine and feel good for them. At least some are enjoying life. Yes life is unfair. We know that. We are not 8 years old. Others' happiness is not the cause of my misery.

Someone becoming bitter, angry, and/or envious because they were starved their whole life-of things that other people were served on a silver platter-does not mean their empathy or compassion would be lower than the person they feel a certain way towards, whether the person directly harmed them or not.
What an absolutely ridiculous statement. Basically kicking a dying horse.
Usually the opposite is true, without one's own suffering, there is no understanding of the suffering within others.
If it's so bad that it gets to the point of becoming viscerally jaded and bitter, well it's only natural to feel that way when you are constantly taunted and teased with the spoils of other's lives, some of which cannot be equally obtained, no matter how hard you work yourself into the ground.
People who have so many things that meet another person's wants/needs do not require you to defend them, they're fine.
It's the people without who should be acknowledged with care and tenderness.