About a month ago, I stepped into class I for a substitution. My primary work lies with adolescents, but these rare windows into the early years are often revealing, like catching a glimpse of the origin story behind the emotions that ripple into adulthood. One of those primal emotions is envy.
It struck me during what seemed like a simple interaction. A little boy had asked me something, and instinctively, my tone shifted, softer, lilting, the way adults often speak to small children. There’s something almost biological about that tonal shift. Babies, pre schoolers, even primary graders respond to it. But what caught my attention wasn’t him, it was his peers. From the corner of my eye, I saw them watching. Their bodies leaned slightly forward, their faces alert but unreadable.
Two minutes after he returned to his seat, a few of them complained. “Ma’am, he’s not sitting properly!” “Ma’am, he’s talking.” Was he really? No. His crime was subtler. He had received attention, warmth, that tiny extra and they had noticed! What was fascinating wasn’t just their reaction, but the precision of it. Even at this young age, children are exquisitely attuned to the social economy of care: who gets it, who doesn’t, and how much.
That moment lingered with me. Because it’s not isolated. It echoes.
Among older students, the scripts become more refined, but the emotional engine remains familiar. “She’s so much prettier”, one student confided. The sentence came draped in casual observation, but underneath was a deep discomfort … a self-comparison rendered sharp by how others validated her friend. Other times it wears a mask: “They didn’t deserve to win that competition”. The language of envy is rarely direct. It often slips in sideways, camouflaged as critique or detachment.
Envy can also haunt in silence. A student who had won a state-level competition shared something fragile with me: “They didn’t say anything, Miss. No congratulations. It’s like… my win made me invisible to them.” She wasn’t angry, just puzzled and quietly hurt. When friends, who usually huddle together through late submissions and parental scoldings, fall silent in the face of your joy, you start to question what your success cost you socially.
In a non-clinical but deeply human conversation. Once, a student murmured, “I envy my friend. Her dad’s really influential… the things I work so hard for, she just… gets”. That sentence contained no malice, just fatigue, and a longing to be seen beyond the struggle. Envy, here, wasn’t about greed. It was about grief.
Children are watchers. They notice whose lunchboxes are fancier, who arrives with a chauffeur, who owns a limited-edition pencil box. Envy does not always stem from material difference sometimes; it grows from the feeling of lack. And what’s harder still is when the envied one has less. A child from a financially challenged background who excels academically can provoke a different kind of discomfort: “She has no life”, peers might scoff. But often, underneath, is a quiet resentment, she did more with less. And that stings.
We rarely name envy aloud. It threatens our self-image of being fair, kind, generous. But to mature emotionally is to recognise that envy isn’t a flaw, it’s a message. It tells us what we desire but feel deprived of. It points to what matters. Envy says: I want that, too. And that’s not ugly, that’s human.
The chest-tightening envy you feel when a peer is praised or achieves something you wanted …that is your inner compass pointing to longing. If we can turn towards that feeling instead of shaming it or projecting it outward, something powerful happens. We begin to ask different questions: What is it that I truly want? And how can I work towards it in my own way?
This kind of emotional reflection isn’t taught. Envy remains the shadow emotion lurking, unspoken, relegated to private journaling or whispered confessions. Emotional literacy in our culture is still emerging, and envy often lies just outside its current vocabulary.
To the student or adult who finds themselves envied, perhaps even punished for their light, know this: it’s not always about you. Often, it’s about someone else’s ache, someone else’s unspoken longing. That doesn’t make their behaviour okay. But it helps to not take it personally. If you need boundaries, build them gently, but firmly.
And to the one who feels the sting of envy meet that part of yourself with curiosity, not judgment. Envy isn’t your enemy. It’s your unmet desire, asking to be acknowledged.
Meghna Joshi, School Counsellor
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