Slivers of Light

37 | Envy

It's really difficult to understand the concept of envy and jealousy that often doesn't even stem from strangers, but from the people closest to you. Because being jealous/envious is the same as claiming that ALLAH, the All-Powerful, cannot give enough, hence the fear that if that person has "more" than you, you get envious because you think there's not enough for you. Even though this is entirely wrong, it's still a toy used by the Shaytan to blacken your heart. But like all of Shaytan's toys, this one too is a huge lie. There's always enough cake to go around. ALLAH never runs out of His endless blessings.

The start of Iblis' demise was the envy and jealousy he harboured towards Adam (AS) followed by his inability to voice out his envy/jealously. And those feelings didn't affect only one being (here: Adam [AS]), more than anything, it affected Iblis himself and the relationship He had to ALLAH. And that's what happens when one gets jealous/envious of another person. One does not only harm the relationship to that person, one even harms one's own relationship to ALLAH.
The relationship between you and that person might get scarred as that person might share less and less of their life. And your own relationship to ALLAH might get hurt even more because deeply inside of you, you have internalised the belief that ALLAH could run out of His endless blessings.
However if you sincerely get happy for another person, you not only get a better and more sincere relationship to that person, you even get a better relationship to ALLAH because that shows that you have deeply internalised the fact that ALLAH indeed never runs out of His blessings. And that is one step closer to Jannah, in sha' ALLAH.