Have you ever scanned the Linked-In or Facebook pages of someone you haven’t seen in a while and found that they’ve experienced an unexpected and fantastic success in one or more areas of life? Historically, I haven’t spent much time on social media, so I haven’t kept up to date on the many of the people I’ve known over the years. The algorithms of these sites, particularly Facebook, tend to bring everyone you’ve encountered in the past back to the forefront of your attention. It seems like every time I log into Facebook, there’s a long-lost acquaintance being suggested as a contact. Yesterday, I stumbled across an old neighbor’s Facebook page. For the sake of his privacy, we’ll call him Mike. Mike owned the house next to the one I was renting when I first moved to California in 2010. We got along great as neighbors. We shared an interest in cars and airplanes and often talked in the little side yards of our houses. I later learned that he had been adopted into a family that was big in the local real estate and I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t in a mansion in a more exclusive part of town. He told me he wasn’t into real estate and he wanted to do his own thing. His thing was trading in organically farmed animal feed. Over the next few years, Mike’s cars became more and more exotic and his other toys were multiplying as well. Mike and his family eventually moved to southern California, but even then I knew that his business was generating millions of dollars annually. I was happy for him and still am. When his profile popped up on Facebook, I couldn’t help but give it a look. After several minutes of sifting through picture after picture of private jets (some of which he apparently pilots himself), exotic travel, yachting and semi-pro race car driving, I had a knot growing in my stomach. It was a familiar knot that only seems to show up when I look into other people’s social media accounts. I love good news, especially when it comes from my own life, but for some reason, watching someone else’s exploits can be strangely painful. An ancient part of my brain demands an explanation as to why this person is living so much “better” when I’m supposed to be the one with all the answers. I began a mental search for anything that would disqualify him from having earned his success. Perhaps he always had money and belonged to the jet set even before I knew him. Maybe he got a loan from his parents and used it to scale his business. Of course, I’ll never know the exact path he took to get where he is, but it wouldn’t matter if I did. The truth is, no matter what you start with, you have to know how to grow it. To keep such envy from becoming parasitic, I use NE to put things into perspective. The reason I’m not Mike is that we reside in different spacetime locations. At some point, I will experience his perspective and vice versa. To be too anxious to experience his perspective or to abandon my own is pointless. We are one and therefore all successes are everyone’s to share. That also goes for failure and pain. With this in mind, it becomes easy to be truly happy for those who are crushing it in life and to sympathize with those who aren’t.