Research has revealed that people are happier if they earn more than others (contrary to economic theory, which has it that you are happier the more you earn, irrespective of others' income). Before you continue reading this essay, answer the following question. Which would you choose: $50,000 per year while others earned half that amount, or $100,000 while others earned twice as much? Give it a moment's thought, then read on. If you chose the former option, well, you are all too human – and like the group of Harvard students who were asked the same question. So, if you work harder and earn more, you won't be very happy if others around you earn more also – only by making sure that they earn less than you, can you ensure your own psychic satisfaction. Now, answer a second question before you read further. Which would you choose: two weeks' holiday, while others got one week's, or four weeks' holiday while others got eight?
Again, like those Harvard students, you probably chose the latter option. People compete over income, but not over leisure. Does any woman ask her friend how much leisure her husband gets? No; but she is probably very aware of his income.
Lack of leisure, however, cuts you off from family and friends and makes you – and your family - miserable. As for your friends, they have probably given up on you by now – besides, they too are too busy trying to earn more than you. Covetousness, therefore, makes your whole life miserable.
I know couples who hardly see their children – so busy are they earning more than the Jones's. And they justify their hyperactivity by all sorts of chimerical fears: that they have to pay rent, pay fees, save, and so on. Yet they are already doing all this and more. Why? Because someone else will pip them at the post. As Bertrand Russell, with his keen logical mind, observed: "Envy consists in seeing things, not in themselves, but in their relations".
But he was only partly right; for people compare themselves, not with those who are worse off, but with those who are better off. And they almost never focus on what they have, but on what they do not have.
Last winter, our charwoman came to our house one morning very late. We were angry at her tardiness; we were far from angry when we learnt the reason. Our charwoman lives in a slum that is situated over a pond. One of her neighbours was an old woman. During the severe cold of the night – it was probably the coldest day last year – the woman froze to death. I still cannot recall the episode without a shudder. "I never lamented about the vicissitudes of time or complained of the turns of fortune except on the occasion when I was barefooted and unable to procure slippers. But when I entered the great mosque of Kufah with a sore heart and beheld a man without feet I offered thanks to the bounty of God,...." So wrote Sa'di, and with one more morsel of his wisdom we shall end these reflections.
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