Bear this in mind as you follow the news in the coming months: no matter how terrible reality is, it can’t be as infinitely bad as you feared
‘Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies,” Gore Vidal remarked memorably, perhaps riffing on a quotation usually attributed to Somerset Maugham: “It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.” But an intriguing recent study suggests that the mere prospect of a friend succeeding might be worse: researchers found that we reliably feel more envy toward things people are due to enjoy in future – professional accolades, dream holidays, dream dates – than when they’ve already enjoyed them. In real life, of course, that’s partly because the experience turns out to be rubbish. Here, though, it was the simple fact that it was no longer in the future: once the Caribbean scuba-diving holiday is happening, or the promotion has been achieved, previously seething onlookers largely stop caring (and, presumably, move on to envying whoever’s due for a holiday next month).
Which seems odd: isn’t the whole point of envy that you want what others have, rather than what they’ll later have? But there’s a broader psychological truth revealed here, which is that the future is often more tormenting than the past, just because it’s open-ended. That’s most obvious in the case of worry: worrisome future events are rarely quite so anxiety-inducing once they’re unfolding, and nobody worries about them once they’ve happened. It’s the same with envy: the possibility of my friend’s new book becoming an acclaimed bestseller allows my imagination to range freely over every potential enviable outcome, but once the possibility becomes reality – even if it’s truly spectacular – it’s finite and concrete. I can get my mind around it, adapt to it, perhaps even take pleasure from it. (I said perhaps.)
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