Why Does What I Have Stop Making Me Happy When I Discover That Someone Else Has More?

Why Does What I Have Stop Making Me Happy When I Discover That Someone Else Has More?

Two employees receive a bonus of ten thousand shekels at the end of the year. The first goes home delighted. He is already thinking about what he will do with the money, tells his wife, and feels that the company invested in him and appreciates his work. The next morning he discovers that the employee in the office next door received fifteen thousand.

Nothing was taken from him.

The same ten thousand shekels are still in his account.

But something changed.

Yesterday they were a blessing.

Today they are an insult.

What exactly happened overnight?

Not to the bank account.

To the measuring stick.

We like to think that we evaluate life according to what we have. In practice, we often evaluate it according to the difference between what we have and what someone else has.

A child was delighted with the bicycle he received until he saw his friend’s bicycle.

A family enjoyed its apartment very much until visiting the neighbors’ new home.

A person was satisfied with his career until meeting an old friend from yeshiva and discovering how far that friend had advanced.

A woman was happy with the family vacation until seeing photos a friend posted from a much more expensive vacation.

And the strangest thing is that we lost nothing.

We merely received new information about someone else.

Sukkot arrives precisely at this point in the year.

The Torah does not call it only the Festival of Sukkot. In Parashat Mishpatim it says: “And the Festival of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in your labors from the field” (Exodus 23:16). And in Parashat Re’eh: “You shall make for yourself the Festival of Sukkot for seven days, when you gather in from your threshing floor and your winepress” (Deuteronomy 16:13).

A person stands at the end of the season and brings the harvest home.

The threshing floor is full.

The winepress is full.

He can see with his own eyes what grew this year.

And precisely then the Torah says: “You shall rejoice on your festival” (Deuteronomy 16:14).

Apparently there could be no more natural time to rejoice.

But perhaps this is exactly when the danger begins.

Because when everyone gathers, everyone can also see how much everyone else gathered.

The neighbor had twenty sacks.

I had twelve.

His vineyard produced more.

Mine produced less.

A moment ago I was looking at my harvest.

Now I am looking at the difference.

Here the commentators open a very deep layer in the festival.

The Rashbam explains that the Torah established Sukkot at the time of ingathering, precisely when a person’s “granaries are filled with grain and the winepresses with wine and oil,” and prosperity can lead to a sense of self-assurance. The Torah therefore takes a person out of the house into the sukkah and reminds him of the period in the wilderness, when there were no fields, houses, and harvests on which a person could rely (Rashbam, Leviticus 23:43).

That is a powerful point.

The sukkah does not arrive when a person has nothing.

It arrives precisely when there is plenty.

Precisely when the storeroom is full.

Precisely when measuring can begin.

Maimonides explains in The Guide for the Perplexed that the Torah’s festivals connect historical memory with the present condition of life, and with respect to Sukkot he links dwelling in the sukkah to the memory of life in the wilderness and to joy at the time of gathering the fruits (The Guide for the Perplexed 3:43). A person stands amid the abundance of settled land but is required to remember where he came from.

Sforno emphasizes in his commentary on “when you gather in from your threshing floor and your winepress” that the festival comes at a time when a person is enjoying the blessing that has been gathered in, and therefore is commanded to direct joy toward the One who gave the blessing rather than remain only with a sense of ownership over what has been accumulated (Sforno, Deuteronomy 16:13-15).

The Kli Yakar repeatedly develops a similar direction in his explanation of the mitzvah of sukkah. Precisely when a person reaches abundance and stability, there is a need to remember that this world is not a place of absolute security and that possessions must not become the source of pride and identity (Kli Yakar, Leviticus 23:43).

The Festival of Ingathering therefore places before us a question that does not arise with the same intensity at planting time.

What do you do with what you have already received?

Does blessing become gratitude?

Or comparison?

Do you see a harvest?

Or a ranking?

Can you say, “I have”?

Or can you know what you have only after checking what someone else has?

Only after this Torah foundation can we see how directly this question touches a human mechanism that has been studied in fascinating ways.

In 1995, Sara Solnick and David Hemenway published a study in which participants were presented with choices between different income situations. In one example, a person could earn a higher amount in a world where others earned even more, or a lower amount in a world where others earned less. A significant portion of participants preferred a situation in which their absolute income was lower, provided that their relative position was higher.

Think about that.

A person is willing to have less.

As long as someone else has even less.

That means that some of our suffering does not come from deprivation.

It comes from position.

Leon Festinger formulated social comparison theory in the 1950s, according to which people evaluate themselves to a significant degree through comparison with others. In situations where there is no clear absolute standard, a person looks around in order to understand where they stand.

That is a natural mechanism.

But it can become a trap.

Because there will always be someone who has more.

Someone whose home is larger.

Whose children are more successful.

Whose book sells more copies.

Whose class is fuller.

Whose salary is higher.

Whose marriage looks better.

Whose vacation is more impressive.

And if my joy depends on being ahead of everyone else, I have built a system that cannot win.

Even when I rise one level, I will find someone on the next level.

This explains a phenomenon we know very well.

A person dreams for years of buying an apartment.

He saves.

Works hard.

Takes a mortgage.

The day arrives.

He receives the key.

During the first month he walks around the apartment excitedly.

After a year he barely notices it anymore.

Then a friend buys a larger apartment.

Suddenly he sees his own home again.

But this time through its shortcomings.

The kitchen is small.

The balcony is narrow.

There is no office.

The building is old.

What happened to the apartment?

Nothing.

The house against which it is measured changed.

The same happens with children.

A son receives an 85.

The parents are pleased.

Then they ask, “And what did Yonatan get?”

Suddenly the 85 tastes different.

Why did we ask?

Does Yonatan’s grade change what our son knew on the test?

No.

But it changes his position on the scale.

Here lies an enormous difference between aspiration and comparison.

Aspiration says: I want to advance relative to where I am now.

Comparison says: I want to be above you.

Aspiration can build a person.

Constant comparison can make it impossible for even genuine achievements to produce joy.

A person can be far better today than five years ago and still feel like a failure simply because, in the meantime, the comparison group changed.

This happens with particular intensity in the digital world.

In the past, a person compared a home to a few other homes on the street.

Today a person opens a phone and within ten minutes sees the kitchen of a millionaire in London, a vacation in the Maldives, an enormously expensive wedding, a twelve-year-old who plays music like a professional, a thirty-year-old who has already sold a company for millions, and a family photographed at sunset with everyone dressed in white and no child fighting.

Then the person closes the phone.

And walks into their own kitchen.

Suddenly something there seems smaller.

Not because the kitchen changed.

Because the eye came home carrying a new ruler.

Here the Festival of Ingathering offers us a spiritual exercise almost opposite to the culture around us.

Gather what is yours.

Not the neighbor’s.

Not what you think should have been yours.

Not what your brother has.

Not what you see in other people’s lives.

“When you gather in from your threshing floor and your winepress.”

Your threshing floor.

Your winepress.

Stand for a moment before what your year produced.

Perhaps not everything succeeded.

Perhaps part of the field remained dry.

But what did grow?

What friendship was built this year?

What did you learn?

How did you change?

Which child grew closer to you?

Which trait did you repair?

Which crisis did you survive?

Which ordinary morning did you receive again and again without realizing it was a gift?

Who still sits at your table?

Whose phone call can you still receive?

Whom can you still call?

Some people possess enormous treasures and feel poor because they manage the inventory of their blessings according to the neighbor’s storeroom.

Perhaps this is one of the deepest differences between envy and gratitude.

Gratitude asks: what did I receive?

Envy asks: what did I receive compared with that person?

These are completely different questions.

And they produce completely different lives.

This is true in spiritual life as well.

A person begins studying one page of Gemara each day and manages to continue for two months. That is a real achievement.

Then the person meets someone who has already completed the entire Talmud three times.

Suddenly those two months look ridiculous.

But why?

Does the knowledge that another person completed the Talmud erase the sixty pages already learned?

A person begins giving charity regularly. Later he hears about someone who donates a hundred times more, and his own giving suddenly seems small in his eyes.

A person succeeds in praying with concentration for a few minutes, then reads about great Torah figures and begins to regard his own prayer as worthless.

Of course we should aspire.

Of course there are people from whom we should learn.

But there is a difference between a great person who inspires me to grow and a great person whose greatness causes me to erase what I have already built.

Even in the service of God, comparison can steal the joy from which a person might have grown.

There is another interesting phenomenon: sometimes we envy something we do not actually want.

A person sees a friend who bought a luxury car and feels a pang.

But if he asks himself seriously: would I be willing to work another twenty hours every week in order to maintain the kind of life that makes that car possible?

Perhaps not.

He does not want the friend’s life.

He wants one detail from it.

We compare the beautiful parts of other people’s lives with the full price we pay for our own.

We see the house and not the mortgage.

The position and not the nights.

The stage and not the loneliness.

The successful children and not the struggles we do not know about.

The photograph and not the life outside the frame.

That is why comparison is almost always unfair.

We compare our inside with their outside.

There is also a simple practical test here.

When something we have stops making us happy, it is worth asking: did it actually become worse, or did I simply discover that someone else has more?

That small question can save a great deal of joy.

Am I truly dissatisfied with my home?

Or was I satisfied until visiting friends?

Am I truly disappointed with my child?

Or did the disappointment begin when I heard what the neighbor’s child is doing?

Am I really not progressing?

Or did I begin following someone who is twenty years ahead of me?

Is my salary insufficient for my needs?

Or did it become small in my eyes only after I heard what a friend earns?

This is not a call to stop learning from others.

Comparison can give us information.

It can reveal possibilities.

It can awaken aspiration.

But we must not allow it to become the judge of blessing.

Because if the neighbor determines how much I need in order to be happy, I will never own my own joy.

Perhaps there is special depth in the fact that the Torah does not say only “the Festival of Sukkot.”

It also says “the Festival of Ingathering.”

Before you go searching for what is missing, stop and gather.

Not only produce.

Gather what already exists in your life.

There are things we have possessed for years and never counted because they did not carry a price tag.

Relative health.

One person with whom we can truly talk.

A child who calls us father.

A home whose door can be closed.

A table around which people still sit.

The ability to get up in the morning.

A book we can open.

A prayer we can say.

Someone who waits for us to come home.

Perhaps the Festival of Ingathering asks a very simple question:

Have we ever counted the things we are so afraid to lose?

Some people discover how rich they were only after something is taken away.

Sukkot offers another possibility.

To discover the wealth while it is still here.

To stand within our own ingathering without looking for a moment into the neighbor’s storeroom and say: this is what I received. This is what I built. This is what grew. There is more road ahead, more to repair, more to aspire to, but I do not need to diminish my blessing in order to acknowledge someone else’s blessing.

The Torah chose to say “You shall rejoice on your festival” precisely at the time of ingathering, perhaps because the great test of joy is not whether we received everything.

The test is whether we can see what we received before checking how much the person standing beside us received.