She was battling the elements. Gravity, without remorse, tugged at her lime-green shopping bags. The bags swayed so close to the ground they almost dragged. Her body curved into a boomerang as she scaled up the ramp to the train station.

Inspiration is inclusive. I feel inspired when I see the best of myself in others.

“Go you good thing!” I whispered under my breath.

Her head hung high. Well, as high as it could on bones as brittle as sawdust. Under the wrinkles carved with age and stress, was a face possessed with determination.

As the train passed her, my neck craned to follow her. At the edge of the window, I caught my reflection in the foreground of the glass. This old lady has little I desire but represents something I value. I am inspired by her resilience but not threatened by her identity. I notice my thick black eyebrows hang in the glass. The one thing I know that is available to us all is death, and this old lady seems to have a monopoly of it.

----

Envy is exclusive. I feel envious when I see a perceived lack in myself completed in another. Envy refracts the humanity of people through the lens of our insecurities. We start seeing the complete versions of ourselves outside ourselves.

I turn from the window. The train has stopped in a nice part of town. In this postcode, concerns are scheduled in and managed at an hourly rate. As if Fear couldn’t afford the inflated house prices.

A handsome man walks in confidently. Well, he must have been handsome – I didn’t look at his face. I guessed as much from the outline of his build. Envy does better without the details.

He showcased a pearly smile and walked leading with his shoulders. His fashionable beige tunic looked like it required more upkeep than my apparel hoodie. A beautiful lady hung onto his arm. I could tell she was beautiful by the shininess of her hair and her galloping giggles. Though, I hadn’t looked at her face either: she could well have been a haggard witch with an incredible shampoo and conditioner routine. My gaze didn’t linger to find out. Lest my envy be mistaken for unwelcomed desire.

I couldn’t tell you what exactly I envied in this blur. Perhaps it was the blur itself. The hazy hues of my identity, my desire and what I felt was ‘Not I’. A smudge between the boundary of who I was and who I felt I couldn’t be.

I retract back to the window. Reflections in a window are more flattering than a mirror. The same thick eyebrows now knit across the glass.

Inspiration and envy can both be helpful mirrors. They help identify what connects and separates us from others. However, it is relatively harmless to be lost in inspiration. Inspiration casts an image that connects us to what we desire within the boundaries of ourselves and what we value. On the other hand, Envy can be harmful. Envy is desire that is outside ourselves and unrestrained. Unrecognised, envy fractals into shard of glass onto which our broken self-image dances: reduced, incomplete and separated.