“Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.” Gore Vidal.
The first time I encountered the above quote by Gore Vidal, thought it odd and dangerous for a friend to have to feel that way about my success. I mean, are my friends not supposed to be happy and to celebrate my successes? Why else are we friends if not to help each other attain our goals and also become happy when those goals are achieved? I began to pray not to have a Gore Vidal as a friend, until, in introspection, it began to occur to me that I might also have felt some unease over a friend’s success at one time or another; I, too, might have suffered from what I now like to think of as “Cain Complex”, which I derive from the biblical figure (Cain) who murdered his brother out of envy over the latter’s “success”.
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