Envy and pity are close to opposites, but they share one trait: the longer the perspective you consider, the weaker the feeling becomes.

This is obvious when the cause is an immediate circumstance, such as a debilitating injury or winning the lottery. But it’s still true of fixed, life-long characteristics.

You could be envious of great beauty, or pity the fugly friend. When you take the decades-long perspective, that beauty will only last so long, and the lack of beauty be only so inhibiting.

This becomes true of everything. Financial success, relationships, intelligence, all of these ebb and flow through life. And in the cases where they don’t - they eventually end in death, the ultimate equalizer.

I suspect this is partially why aging mellows most people out. Of course, you just have less energy, but you also choose not to dedicate as much of that energy into things which won’t matter too much over time.

I sometimes employ a mental exercise when I see someone else who is causing me to feel envy or pity. I visualize them as children, aging through life to where they are now, then continuing to age until they’re near death. It’s never very different from person to person, never all that different from myself. Any given moment of our lives might be very different, but the human experience itself only has so much possible variation.

The things that are quintessentially human are more interesting. Not everyone will experience the extremes that lead others to strong feelings of envy or pity. Everyone will experience some wins here and there, and some hardship now and then. Those should be celebrated or mourned in the moment, with the long term perspective in the back of the mind if envy or pity try to take hold.