Envy has to be one of the nastiest emotions. There are worse traits of course - murderous intent is not particularly charming, for example, and certainly gloating should be an imprisonable offence - but as far as minor sins go, envy definitely gets a big thumbs down.
It's a deeply unattractive emotion for a number of reasons. You often feel envious only of people you know well - it's fine for Eddie Irvine to have loads of cash. But a colleague? Now, that's a different kettle of fish. In fact, the better you know someone, the more all-enveloping the envy becomes, and Lordy, does it envelope.
Start feeling jealous of somebody and you might as well sign up for ulcers, sleepless nights and a facial tic straight away. It's a different form of jealousy than the irrational, obsessive and ultimately destructive kind which happens between lovers. That's a subject for a psychology thesis or a Russian novel or, indeed, a whole travelling library of Russian novels, not a column about the highs and lows of twentydom.
No, the particular brand of jealousy I'm talking about is that crushing treadmill you step onto when you start thinking a bit too frequently about how well someone else is doing, how successful your best friend is, how popular your brother is, how much cash that really spotty guy from school is making these days and, more to the point, how much better they're doing than you. We are meant to enjoy the successes of the ones we love, feel happy that they're doing well and celebrate their material rewards. But let's be honest - it can be nigh on impossible. To the tortuous effects of jealousy are added those of self-disgust - what kind of Satan's little helper are you to be so jealous of a deserving friend?
Envy is an emotion present from childhood - from the very moment when Mine! became a favourite word in your vocabulary. Learning that life isn't fair and that there will always be people with more than you, was just another lesson to pick up, like whistling or spitting. And once you hit your 20s, it rears its head all over again. At least when you were in school, so were your friends; if you were in college, so were most of your mates. But once you're turfed out into the real world, everyone starts doing different things at different rates. It doesn't take a genius to work out that some people are going to do better than others. So within a year or two of people starting their first jobs, our old friend envy is back having a better time than he has had since Sparkle Barbie and Action Man caused such a palaver in first class.
Envy doesn't have to be financially-motivated. I remember when I was trotting round the country's cocktail parties and race meetings while doing the social diary beat for this paper. For the first time I became really aware of jealousy from both sides of the fence. To most people I had landed a laughably cushy job - "God, do you really get paid to go out to parties?" was the usual refrain.
Admittedly, there was a lot of fun involved and compared with having to swill out pig sties or comb children's hair for nits or dress up as cheese straw for a marketing company, it would seem rather glamorous. But I can't tell you how much time I spent wracked with envy of friends as they plotted whether to have takeaway pizza during Friends or to wait for Seinfeld. At the end of a day's work, all I wanted was a hot date with the sofa but instead it was on with the smart dress and out into the night, to make small talk to beat the band. My job was work like anyone else's.
Quite apart from dealing with my own feelings of envy, I started having to deal with the envy of others. Most of my friends understood that it wasn't all champagne and roses round my way but even so, I could tell that people sometimes found their own lives a little lacking in free drink, famous people and gilt-edged invitations, compared to mine. Little use telling them I'd swap them for a night in with my laundry - it didn't really wash. Realising that people could be jealous of what I did, didn't mean I knew how to handle it all of a sudden. Any eejit would know not to go round singing "I've got free tickets. And you have not", but what about telling friends what your week was about - was that insensitive? Did I sound patronising if I enthused about a friend's promotion - I did it with all honesty but how was it being received?
It made me realise how completely pointless envy is. Despite what kooky therapists and recreational drug users will tell you, it's impossible to get inside someone else's head. The person who has everything is unlikely to wake up in the morning singing Aqua songs and saying, "Good Lord, it appears I have everything." They're just as likely to suggest that the greatest hits of Leonard Cohen would be a more appropriate soundtrack for a life as wretched as theirs.
Still, it looks as though there might soon be some come-uppance getting on a large scale. The kind of societal revenge that sociologists in years to come will point to as the moment when everybody stopped coveting every body else's everything. If the so-called Ansbacher "golden circle" are actually punished or at least exposed, there might be some sense that life can be fair after all.