Personal Blogs

The Shadow in the Applause: On Envy

There’s a silence that falls between the lines of celebration — a pause that no one speaks of. It’s the moment you hear that a friend has signed with a major publisher, or that a peer’s essay, raw and brilliant, has gone viral. You smile, of course. You congratulate them. But somewhere deep, below the outward grace, something darker stirs. A tightening. A sting. A question: Why not me?

The Greeks knew this feeling well. They called it phthonos — a word weightier than mere envy. In classical usage, it wasn’t just the longing for another’s success; it was a kind of hostile resentment. A wish not only to possess what another has, but that they might lose it. That their light be dimmed.

In the Septuagint, phthonos appears among the “works of the flesh” in Galatians 5:21, grouped with hatred, jealousy, and strife. The early Christians saw it not just as a flaw in character but as a toxin to the soul. Envy, they believed, eats away at gratitude and erodes the capacity to love. It’s a sin not of the hands but of the heart — and perhaps one of the hardest to admit.

Writers are especially vulnerable. Ours is a solitary path strewn with invisible milestones: acceptances, accolades, audiences. Success is rarely loud — it arrives in social posts and footnotes, reader comments and retreat invitations. But it can awaken that same ancient force. Not admiration, but ache. Not inspiration, but inner corrosion.

What makes phthonos especially cruel is its appetite for illusion. We envy a version of someone that does not truly exist. We compare our whole life — tangled, imperfect, holy in its ordinariness — to someone else’s highlight reel. We imagine that their joy is seamless, their journey unburdened, their talent more worthy. Yet what we see is often performance. Behind the applause may sit despair, rejection, exhaustion — the very things we ourselves hide.

Christian theology offers a jarring image: that Satan, the adversary, acts out of envy. Not for wealth or power, but for the love God gives to humanity — the fragile, dust-born beings granted dignity and destiny. In this reading, envy was the first rebellion. If such a force could reach heaven, no wonder it creeps through our quiet hours.

The antidote, Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 13:4, is love. Love does not envy. It does not count another’s gain as its own loss. It does not hoard approval or begrudge applause. Love flings the doors wide open. It says: I see your joy, and I add mine to it. It’s a kind of holy generosity, and one we must learn over and over.

Sometimes I remind myself that the real work is not the prize, but the page. That I would still write, even if no one ever noticed. That our task is not to outshine but to illuminate. And that the soul grows smaller each time it keeps score — and larger each time it lets another shine.

We were not made to grasp at crowns, but to cast them down in praise. Perhaps that’s what the poets meant all along — that true joy is not diminished by being shared. That light, unlike wealth, increases the more we give it away.

And so, when that silence returns — when a friend’s good fortune tests my grace — I try to say what I mean and mean what I say: Well done. I’m happy for you. And some days, with enough prayer and practice, it’s even true.