別人的生活看上去如此完美,我們又該如何保持快樂

One night about five years ago, just before bed, I saw a tweet from a friend announcing how delighted he was to have been shortlisted for a journalism award. I felt my head spin, my teeth clench and my chest tighten. I did not sleep until the morning.

大約五年前的一個夜晚，我剛要上牀睡覺，就看到了朋友發的一條推特--獲新聞獎提名的他是多麼的高興。我突然感到暈乎乎的、牙齒緊閉、胸腔悶痛，直到清晨才得以入睡。

Another five years or so before that, when I was at university, I was scrolling through the Facebook photos of someone on my course whom I vaguely knew. As I clicked on the pictures of her out clubbing with friends, drunkenly laughing, I felt my mood sink so fast I had to sit back in my chair. I seemed to stop breathing.

大約又過了5年，在我上大學的時候，我打開臉書隨意瀏覽，看到了一個熟人的照片，她和我上同一門課。我翻看着她和朋友出去泡吧的照片、喝醉了大笑的照片，我發現我的心情也在變差，不得不坐到椅子上。我好像無法呼吸了。

I have thought about why these memories still haunt me from time to time - why they have not been forgotten along with most other day-to-day interactions I have had on social media - and I think it is because, in my 32 years, those are the most powerful and painful moments of envy I have experienced. I had not even entered that journalism competition, and I have never once been clubbing and enjoyed it, but as I read that tweet and as I scrolled through those photographs, I so desperately wanted what those people had that it left me as winded as if I had been punched in the stomach.

我也曾想過，爲什麼這些記憶會時不時的困擾我--爲什麼我每天都在玩社交媒體，但卻還是忘不了他們的歡樂時刻--我想可能是因爲，在我活着的32年歲月裏，這些是我最爲嫉妒、最爲痛苦的時刻。我從未參加過新聞比賽，也從來沒有享受過泡吧，但看着那條推文、翻看那些照片的時候，我非常想要這些人擁有的一切，這種想法令我渾身發抖，就好像肚子被人打了一拳。

We live in the age of envy. Career envy, kitchen envy, children envy, food envy, upper arm envy, holiday envy. You name it, there's an envy for it. Human beings have always felt what Aristotle defined in the fourth century BC as pain at the sight of another's good fortune, stirred by "those who have what we ought to have".

我們生活在嫉妒的時代。職業嫉妒、餐桌嫉妒、孩子嫉妒、食物嫉妒、上臂嫉妒、節假日嫉妒。無論你說什麼，都會存在嫉妒心理。人類時刻感受着亞里士多德在公元前4世紀所定義的那種看到別人有錢的痛苦--尤其被'他們擁有的那些原本應該屬於我'的心理所刺激。

But with the advent of social media, says Ethan Kross, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan who studies the impact of Facebook on our wellbeing, "envy is being taken to an extreme". We are constantly bombarded by "Photoshopped lives", he says, "and that exerts a toll on us the likes of which we have never experienced in the history of our species. And it is not particularly pleasant."

但隨着社交媒體的出現，密歇根大學的心理學教授伊森·克洛斯說道（他研究了臉書對我們健康的影響），"嫉妒正走向極端"。"美化後的"生活總是充斥在我們周圍，他說道，"我們從未經歷過的美好事物給我們造成了史無前例的影響，這種影響並不愉快。"