peer-to-peer progress

nowadays i'm less jealous. i feel either admiration or indifference.

i used to not understand what it meant to be "happy for someone" cause i never really felt it. other people's gain felt like an insult to my inability to achieve as much as they did. i was afraid of the discomfort of not winning that i've grown paranoid and mistakenly saw innocuous displays of joy as harmful. but in reality, all harm came from my own irrational overthinking.

perhaps it's an underlying self-centeredness that makes me think i'm the super important main character of my life story. but the more i let go of things i thought mattered because they felt desirable, the less i become attached to the strict dichotomy of "my benefit" or "my loss." wanting to feel good is necessary, but wanting it too much made me desperately selfish. 

i've since learned to regard others as how i would've regarded myself. i look at a world a much larger interconnected collective than islands of self-serving individuals. in a sense, when good things happen to my peers, it eventually contributes to the common good of the environment we all inhabit. that alone is enough for me to sincerely say "i'm happy for you."

don't get me wrong. i'm still a curmudgeon that's averse to social interactions. i just happen to have a better way of dealing with life's uncertainties. this is just one of many character flaws i have to work on.