Since that’s all you worry/think about

No Irsquom not a Grammar Nazi Also those who are seem to proudly worry much about usage of language but hardly enough about history to care for what German for Nazi stands for That said if I find you referring to the words envy and jealousy interchangeably I tend to interject itrsquos a pet peeveEnvy in my head means casually wishing for something that someone else has Whereas jealousy is directed with fuller force at someone with something that you believe you deserved moremdashalso a consequent fear of losing what you already have Itrsquos real Which is why there are jealous and not envious loversYou can be envious of Mukesh Ambanirsquos wealth Hardly jealous The lack of his Antilia adds nothing to your bank account To be fair you can hardly be envious of Ambani either For envy like empathy is usually experienced among equalsSuresh is more likely pained by pure envy from a middleclass classmate from school who turned out to be the successful Mukesh What follows yoursquoll notice from Mukeshrsquos former classmates are loose talk about what a loser he used to be ldquoUsed to be right there in my house borrowing money doing nothinghelliprdquoAs if anyone ever airdropped to the proverbial top Everybody was a nobody doing nothing as a child or incrementally moving up as an adult by fluke or crook Deal with it The issue with Suresh and the conventional idea of success is itrsquos inevitably measured against othersThe closer the worse Fake proximity derived from social media making it infinitely worse still Since nobody is as happy and happening as their public self on FacebookInstagram nor as accomplished as on LinkedInmdashjust as nobody can potentially be as roundtheclock angry as they appear on TwitterBy himself Suresh is better than fine too Only that hersquos left to others where his personal measure of success seems the opposite of Schadenfreudemdashthe more helpful German word for deriving happiness from peoplersquos miseries In which case Suresh seems unhappier by other peoplersquos perceptible happiness than his ownWhich is also success lensed by a lsquoscarcity mindsetrsquo with natural envy often getting interchanged with unnatural jealousy As if a peer doing better at anything takes away anything from you Obviously not noStrangely Suresh should only feel proud of his friend He is more likely to be invited to Mukeshrsquos dhokla party than if he didnrsquot know him at allUnless they were actively vying for the same positionjob Over there it appears jealousyrsquos fair But thatrsquos also looking at success as a hierarchical vertical notion whereas the sum of accomplishmentsmdashsocial familial personal professionalmdashadd up horizontally making a lot of us equal while it isnrsquot so apparentThis is deeply grounding Fellow travellers the closer and longer yoursquove known them help establish that in fact Yoursquore mentally screwed if they think yoursquore ldquosuccessfulrdquo no matter what yoursquove doneSo how exactly do you define success I ask this because my friends and I talk about it a lot We wish strangers did the same Irsquom sure through social conditioning yoursquove obsessed over it all your life No matter what your age The fact is success like joy or sex is inescapable Everybody finds some whether or not they show off is another matterSo what is it Money That like good health appears paramount only when yoursquore in desperate need of it Most after a certain income bracket arenrsquot No end to greed of courseThereafter is it power For which the general notion is you ought to get your head heart and hands dirty in order to obtain it And that it can be as easily snatched away by schematic trickery instead of merely the competitorsrsquo luck talentThe latter two besides farming is more honestly embodied only in sports where you run as fast as you can on your own track to win rather than looking to trip those parallel to you Is success a measure of public validation for personal talents then Where someone will always garner greater personal fame than you do And be more talented alwaysIs that dispiriting while you stick to perseverance over perfection timeenergy spent over inherent gift Do you stop playing cricket because Sachin already exists Can you also merrily quit playing cricket with professional ambitions and start looking for other things to do knowing that it takes a Sachin to make it and there are only 11 players in a national team In most other spheres there is inevitably greater space for allWould love to know about you herersquos what I think success equals confidence Which in turn is best gauged by feeling secure about oneself enough to obsess less and less about how you feel about others or others feel about you Let alone perennially hoping to impressThe others are too busy feelingthinking about themselves all the time We forget that foremost Can the success of all that Irsquove written above then be judged by how many will readlikeshare this No That I really wanted to write it and didYesMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper