Member-only story

You need to envy the entire life

Mickey Mellen
2 min readNov 6, 2023

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In a world that is still fixated so much on social media, it’s easy to just see the best of folks. You’ll see your neighbors vacationing in a tropical resort and feel a degree of envy, but it’s important to see the whole picture.

We all know deep down that social media is generally just a window in the best moments in the lives of our friends, but that doesn’t always help. However, I recently heard a statement from David Senra in a podcast where he framed it very nicely. He simply said:

“You are allowed to envy somebody if you envy the entire life. You are not allowed to envy pieces of it.”

No one is perfect.

Even your friends online have struggles, they just tend not to show them on Facebook. It reminds me of this great Lending Tree commercial from years ago:

Envy can be a good thing if handled carefully, and is often a great source of motivation to improve ourselves and our situations. Just know that if you really want to envy someone, it’s worth looking at the entire picture see what bad lurks outside of the camera. It’s never as rosy as the view you get from your perspective, and your life is probably more envious than you give it credit for.

Originally published at https://www.mickmel.com on November 6, 2023.

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Mickey Mellen
Mickey Mellen

Written by Mickey Mellen

I’m a cofounder of @GreenMellen, and I’m into WordPress, blogging and seo. Love my two girls, gadgets, Google Earth, and I try to run when I can.

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