别人的生活看上去如此完美,我们又该如何保持快乐

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.

大约五年前的一个夜晚，我刚要上床睡觉，就看到了朋友发的一条推特--获新闻奖提名的他是多么的高兴。我突然感到晕乎乎的、牙齿紧闭、胸腔闷痛，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.

大约又过了5年，在我上大学的时候，我打开脸书随意浏览，看到了一个熟人的照片，她和我上同一门课。我翻看着她和朋友出去泡吧的照片、喝醉了大笑的照片，我发现我的心情也在变差，不得不坐到椅子上。我好像无法呼吸了。

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.

我也曾想过，为什么这些记忆会时不时的困扰我--为什么我每天都在玩社交媒体，但却还是忘不了他们的欢乐时刻--我想可能是因为，在我活着的32年岁月里，这些是我最为嫉妒、最为痛苦的时刻。我从未参加过新闻比赛，也从来没有享受过泡吧，但看着那条推文、翻看那些照片的时候，我非常想要这些人拥有的一切，这种想法令我浑身发抖，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".

我们生活在嫉妒的时代。职业嫉妒、餐桌嫉妒、孩子嫉妒、食物嫉妒、上臂嫉妒、节假日嫉妒。无论你说什么，都会存在嫉妒心理。人类时刻感受着亚里士多德在公元前4世纪所定义的那种看到别人有钱的痛苦--尤其被'他们拥有的那些原本应该属于我'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."

但随着社交媒体的出现，密歇根大学的心理学教授伊森·克洛斯说道（他研究了脸书对我们健康的影响），"嫉妒正走向极端"。"美化后的"生活总是充斥在我们周围，他说道，"我们从未经历过的美好事物给我们造成了史无前例的影响，这种影响并不愉快。"