Fighting Envy
I am currently reading the book The Curve of Time which is a journal by a widowed mother who spent her summers coasting the waters near Vancouver Island with her four children in the 1930s. The book is a lovely tribute to a bygone era of abandoned Indian villages, limited technology, soaring mountains and endless days that blend with each other. In our frenetic and always connected world of 2025, the book reminds me that there are other ways to live and experience the planet we inhabit. For the past few summers, my family has taken a few days to canoe camp with friends and disconnect. It is a splendid respite from the non-stop bustle of the modern world.
Many years ago I attended a lecture by David Suzuki, the Canadian environmentalist, scientist, public speaker and advocate for the planet. The talk was held at McGill University around 2010 in the context of sustainability conference. During his talk he spoke of the rising tides and temperatures, the perils for the planet, the need to change our ways and the risks we are taking with our overconsumption and pollution. Of all the things he said, one item stood out. David Suzuki highlighted how the average home in Canada had dramatically grown in size over the past few decades. In his youth in the 1950s and 60s, homes were often no larger than 1200-1500 square feet. Today, the average house is often over 2500 square feet. The same growth in size can be found in our cars, wardrobes and many other things. Suzuki argued that to solve our sustainability issues, all we had to do was go back to our old habits which at the time, were perfectly adequate for most people.
The famed investor Charlie Munger was once asked what drove the world and our need to consume. The natural response many of us will have to this question is greed, money, lust, or other emotions that push us to fight for top place and dictate our relations with other people. Munger asserted the main emotion driving our world was in fact Envy. Our envy for what others have is what pushes us to buy more, go bigger and chase an elusive goal that may never really be achievable. This envy is more prevalent today than ever before thanks to the internet, Instagram, influencers and our brains being bombarded with the perfect lives of our friends, relations and celebrities. ‘Keeping up with the Jones’ is nothing new, but I feel it is an overwhelming emotion today that in many ways drives non-optimal decisions. As far as I can tell, too many of us consume too much, save too little and cannot resist the urge to YOLO.
Growing up in a wealthy neighbourhood and at a private school, it was clear that the disease of envy spared no one, especially not the upper classes. If your friend had an Audi, you needed a Porsche. I recently heard of a study (there are so many) that demonstrated that no matter what a person had in income or wealth, they always thought that twice that amount would be the right amount to have. If you had 100$ in your bank account, 200$ would make all the difference. If you had 1 million dollars, 2 million would be enough. I recently know someone who made about 3 million dollars selling their business, they now want 10 million. The lack of satisfaction is what drives us and despite the negative aspects to chasing money, there are positive sides to this human urge to have more.
Without this envy for what others have, our desire to compete and our need to show off, we may still be living in mud huts on the savanna. Though there are many negative aspects to chasing cash, we must admit that it has numerous positive effects too. Someone famously quipped, “Even if you win the rat race, you are still a rat”. True. But the rat race has helped us invent new liberating machines that do so much work for us, develop air travel that brings the world together and dramatically extend our lifespans and improve our quality of life. The trick, I suppose, is to know when enough is enough for you.
There is no shortage of evidence that people on their deathbeds do not lament the jet they never had. Nearly all the time, they seek the people they love or loved and regret the things they said and did that impacted their human relationships. The challenge is not to knowledge and understand the realities we face at death, but rather to live our life on a day to day basis that leads to the end we know we seek. Today, more then ever before, we are subject to constant temptation. Algorithms play us like a fine tuned violin – leading us to waste time watching meaningless videos instead of calling family and friends, buying things we certainly do not need and making decisions we should not make. The economic precarity that so many people face only exacerbates this situation as we seek some form of temporary balm from the knowledge that our financial position is not good and unlikely to improve.
Discipline and focus are the only bulwark against this assault on our senses. These two skills should be taught at our schools from a young age and reinforced as much as possible. As Steve Jobs said, the most important thing you do is what you say No to. The exercise I always recommend to my friends who ask about their career choices or situation is the white paper vivid vision. The task is to take a blank sheet of paper and write out in narrative form the life you want or the vision you have. This can be a big challenge, but its rewards are tremendous. This task of visioning your life and then living your vision is an urgent task because you just never know when things might end or how fate and fortune may decide your life. An old friend of mine who I had travelled with recently passed away at only 50 years old. He left behind the life he wanted – a wife, three kids and great job. He had everything he had sought, but he hit some very bad luck. This can happen to any of us and knowing what we truly want and trying to live it on a daily basis is the only defence we have against unpredictable misfortune and external influence.
Published on February 24, 2025