I remember a council chamber where a young lawyer stood before me, his logic flawless and his reputation rising like smoke from a fresh fire. I felt a sharp heat behind my ribs, not because he was wrong, but because he was right. My own mind, weary of the same old arguments, sought to dim his light by finding faults in his attire or questioning his lineage. I did not speak then, but I watched him with a hunger that made me feel sick, for I saw clearly that my desire was not for truth, but for the destruction of what I could not possess. The cost was the silence of my own conscience, a quiet rotting of the spirit while I pretended to be merely skeptical.

You must ask yourself if your attention on another’s success is born of curiosity or fear. If you find yourself studying the rise of a neighbor while neglecting your own garden, stop and examine your hands. Envy is not a judgment of merit; it is an admission that your own foundation is weak. Turn your eyes from the glory of others to the work within your own reach. Build something so solid that the shadow of another cannot frighten you, for a mind full of its own creation has no room for the poison of comparison.