“There has come to you the disease of the nations before you, jealousy and hatred. This is the ‘shaver’ (destroyer); I do not say that it shaves hair, but that it shaves (destroys) faith. By the One in Whose Hand is my soul, you will not enter Paradise until you believe, and you will not believe until you love one another. Shall I not tell you of that which will strengthen love between you? Spread (the greeting of) salaam amongst yourselves.” (A hasan hadeeth. Jaami’ al-Tirmidhi, 2434).”
We all experience it. We have all experienced it. We will all experience it. Envy is a stain on the soul. From a religious standpoint, it destroys our faith. From a mental standpoint, it destroys our mental health. It makes us unhappy with who we are, and we cannot change the foundations of who are. What family we came from. What our faces and bodies look like. Our pasts. What’s been written by Allah SWT, our one and only Lord above, is set in stone, and can only be changed due to His own will.
We can however, change our desires. Our values. Our goals. Our piety. Our outlooks and perspectives on life. All according to the will of our one true God. He knows what is best for us, and perhaps the most difficult task that has ever befallen me is accepting that fact. That He has written what is best for me, and I cannot change that which He has written.
I personally feel that this concept is bittersweet. It is good in the sense that I find comfort in the fact that my Lord is taking care of me and paving the best path for me. It is bad in the sense that I desire to lay my own desires and paths. Only He above me, above everything He has created, knows what my future is. What your future is. What the future of the world is.
The entire concept of accepting the fact that only God knows what’s best for me, and that all I can do is just pray and make dua and istakhara, while doing my best in what I do, all while seeing others living my dreams, is difficult. This is where hasad comes into play. Envy. The root of all evil. The last verse of Surat Al-Falaq states: “And from the evil of the envious when he envies.” The surah starts off with God commanding us to say, “I seek refuge in the Lord of the Dawn”, with the following verses explaining what we are seeking refuge from. And according to the final verse, we seek refuge from the evil of the envious when he envies. Envy is a sin, a disease of the soul. Our Lord has commanded us to avoid it whenever possible, for there is evil that lies within it, and destroys our faith.
This is just a short narrative. I wanted to simply list out why envy is bad and gave evidence from a religious standpoint and also mental (I did not provide actual evidence on the psychological effect that envy may have, but ask anyone how they feel when they get a sense of jealousy – it doesn’t feel good).
There is, however, one benefit to envy, if it is a sort of healthy form of it. Take a role model for example. Everyone has a specific role model (or maybe several) they want to be like. Perhaps they don’t even have to be role models; maybe they are just people that have what you want or are what you want to become. You feel jealous of them, and want to become like them, or work hard to achieve what they have. This is motivation. Whether it is healthy or unhealthy is up to you, but without comparisons and metrics to use for what “success” looks like, I’m not sure where we would be. Of course, success should be a self-defined concept, not societally-determined. But if one desires the respect of society, one may have to follow the societal definition of success. The danger here is constantly comparing yourself to what you think “successful” looks like, because comparing yourself with others is the single best way to be unhappy. It is the worst form of envy and destroys our self-image and self-respect. If this form of envy does not generate motivation for us to become great individuals, we must relinquish it immediately. We must be patient for what our Creator has planned for us. We must not only wait for what He has planned for us, but we must also do our best to achieve what we want.
Anything we want to obtain, anyone we want to become, is entirely possible, all according to God’s will. We must do our best to work for what we want, and if our best does not achieve that, then it is simply not what He has determined best for us, and we must do our best to accept the fact that there is something better.
As I mentioned before, this fact is difficult for me to fully accept, because I happen to be a firm believer that whatever we do is what gets us what we desire, but I also seek comfort in the fact that Allah is taking care of me and has already written the best path for me. He has written the best paths for you, me, and everyone else. It is up to us whether we are patient enough to accept this and to relinquish any envy we may be harboring within ourselves. Envy is a disease, a stain on the soul. It is a shame that we must do our best to obscure our happiness and successes from others that may become envious and wish curses upon us. The world would be a much better and happier place without envy, without the work of Shaitan.
Allah SWT is testing us on a daily basis, and if we seek refuge in Him, our Lord, our Creator, our Educator, we will pass those tests and become as happy as we can possibly be. Happiness is a journey, not a destination, and envy will only make that journey more difficult, as we slowly but surely inch our way towards what success is for us.
May Allah protect us from Shaitan and hellfire and envy, grant us the gift of ever-lasting patience, and choose the best for us and make what we truly desire the best for us, and place us in Heaven, inshaAllah. Ameen.
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