I recently listened to these podcast episodes. In the #50 Jealousy episode, they touched mostly on jealousy in different forms of relationships and in the #42 FOMO episode, they talk about FOMO stemming from social media. While the theme of these two episodes is different, they touched on jealousy, envy.
My favorite part of both has to be when the hosts contemplate where their jealousy comes from because when they talked about that, it made me investigate where mine is coming from. While they were discussing this, they discussed a few factors.
Jealousy that come from ingratitude
There’s jealousy or worse, envy that comes from our own ingratitude. When we failed to be grateful to Allah for all the blessings that He has bestowed upon us. And that’s why when we see what He has given to others, the envy comes. If there’s a cure that I can think of is to do a lot of tasbih and tahmid. Say Subhanallah, say Alhamdulillah. And we also need to realize that Allah’s ‘package’ for everyone of His servants is different and every ‘item’ in the ‘package’ is for what’s best for us. We need to have a thankful heart that is always saying tahmid to him for all of the bounty that He has provided us with. I felt this creeping up way too much when I scrolled through Instagram, I felt jealous seeing other people's lives that look good in my life especially when they got something that I wished for. But I forgot that Allah has given me so much improvement in mine compared to previously and I failed to be grateful for His present for me. Ya Allah forgive my ingratitude. It is a bit drastic, but I end up uninstalling Instagram altogether because of this (also it’s because I mindlessly scroll way too much so I need to cut my social media time). Alhamdulillah, it has made my heart more at peace and more focused on the goodness of my own life that He has given to me.
Jealousy that come from arrogance, superiority, entitlement
You know when we feel like we are better than someone but they got better things? And they are happier? That’s when our heart is really ‘sick’. Arrogance is the sickness of the heart that is dangerous because with it, we will not enter Jannah.
وعن عبد الله بن مسعود رضي الله عنه عن النبى صلى الله عليه وسلم قال: “لا يدخل الجنة من كان في قلبه مثقال ذرة من كبر” فقال رجل” إن الرجل يحب أن يكون ثوبه حسناً ونعله حسناً؟ قال: “إن الله جميل يحب الجمال الكبر بطر الحق وغمط الناس” ((رواه مسلم)).
'Abdullah bin Mas'ud (May Allah be pleased with him) reported: The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "He who has, in his heart, an ant's weight of arrogance will not enter Jannah." Someone said: "A man likes to wear beautiful clothes and shoes?" Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said, "Allah is Beautiful, He loves beauty. Arrogance means ridiculing and rejecting the Truth and despising people." [Muslim].
Riyad as-Salihin 611
https://sunnah.com/riyadussalihin:611
Honestly, I am so afraid of this. I don't know how did I let my heart to grow sick from this but whenever I realize this sickness is in me, I can only turn to Him and seek for His forgiveness and for Him to remove ANY of this wretched feeling in my heart. I am no better than anyone else, I sinned a lot and without Allah veiling it, I'll be looking and smelling rotten from it. And I also realized that, when we have arrogance, we will have this sense of entitlement that when we see what other people achieve, we get the sense of "Eh hey, I deserved that too" when you don't really know what the the other people had to go through to be where they are now. For this one, I seek refuge with Allah from the arrogance of my own filthy heart, ya Allah, please remove this sickness from my heart.
Jealousy that come from low self esteem
I also realized that feeling jealous also come from low self esteem. We saw people achieving great feat and we stayed at where we are and we started feeling jealous because we don't own up our own life. Again, it's because we didn't feel grateful with we have and we felt that we are 'small' because we don't get those shiny, extravagant, lively life that people are living. It's really important that we learn to appreciate our own self and how far we have become instead of putting ourselves down comparing our lives with others and end up feeling jealous. We are where we are for reason and we must make the best of it. And we also need to realize that on social media, we only see good things. Very rarely people showcase their weaknesses, their Achilles heel, their vulnerability for people to see (and for good reason as well, because if you want to show that, show it to the Almighty because he is al Jabbar). We see good things and our knowledge is limited on that and Allah know what they have went through and what effort they have put it to get what they get.
To summarize this, to not be jealous of others, you really need to be grateful with what you have and realize that you are already given to you what is good for you. And this is where I will end this reflection from pondering about jealousy after listening to these two episode.
