So it begins. After 12 weeks of recreation, varying amounts of ambition, and fleeting life experiences, school is in session once again. For centuries of American history, summer breaks have been celebrated as a time for rest, a change of pace, and family. Consequently, the end of it has been universally dreaded in one way or another.

While the end of summer may bring thoughts of the autumn colors, crisp fall nights, comfy cardigan sweaters, and the climactic reunion of lifetime friends, the end of summer has a dastardly and solemn connotation in the same breath.

Even though the school year brings new challenges and impositions, they can have value and bring stimulation to everyone. Locker areas and classrooms tirelessly buzz as teens discuss their new classes as well as how their summers “went.”

Teenagers and adults alike have all been directly or indirectly involved in a conversation that requires us to catch up with a colleague and paint an image of how we are and what we have been up to. During these interactions, as more and more people become part of a seemingly self-recursive conversation, we, as competitive and social individuals, feel pressured to stretch the truth just a bit. Students of Parker in such a situations may refer to a summer internship or a class at a pre-collegiate study program of a top-tier university. Likewise, students may feel compelled to go to lengths about their summer houses, day camps, travel, beach parties, just to top it off with tales from Lollapalooza. Certainly, not everyone in the conversation could have a summer so glamorous. And not everyone does. Whether or not we consciously recognize it, these social interactions can drive us to strive for better lives.

If I could, I would encompass all of the side effects and feelings of envy in one word. However, such a word in the English language does not exist. I will use the Czech word “litost” instead. Among speakers of the language, the word is closely attached to the imagery of the humiliated despair that is felt when someone accidentally reminds us, through their accomplishment or pleasure, of everything wrong in our own lives. At the sight of impressive, rejuvenating stories of people’s summers, the façade makes us feel searing self-pity at the scale of our inadequacies and emotional baggage.

Friedrich Nietzsche was arguably the greatest theorist of envy. As a nineteenth-century German philosopher who had no money, no audience, and was not recognized until after his death, his belief was that envy existed everywhere without humans– even consciously realizing how powerfully it affects our behavior.

When I have upbeat conversations about summer at the beginning of the school year, I play around with envy. Typically, I will create a hierarchy in my mind of the best summers. There is an imaginary card game in my mind where each card is another item on the list of summer experiences or endeavors. Once five or ten minutes removed from the conversation, I tend to ponder the conversation, tallying extravagance. Or, I remain in the conversation for a while, simply watching other students boast about their summers.

The most effective way to compare summers is by analyzing the wealth, intelligence, and popularity. Interestingly enough, these measures have existed in mainstream society for centuries of documented history, dating all the way back to the Western Roman Empire.

At my time at Parker, I have met a number of teachers who demonize conversations that compare wealth and intelligence. It’s taboo. They say not to compete, but as I grow older and open my eyes to the outside world, it becomes no secret that comparison only becomes more important socially and even professionally. Recruiters and bosses routinely compare job prospects regularly, for example. So I dismissed the notion of trying to alter self-esteem a long time ago by refraining from comparison.

However, comparative conversations, while essential, do have negative side effects. Comparing myself to other people takes me to a dark place, and I am not the only student who feels the same. No one is safe from being trapped into considering, with high levels of pain, that we yearn for so much that we currently do not possess. Perhaps we are not as likable as we thought we would be, or we didn’t make the starting roster of our sports team, or a topic of discussion causes us to reflect on irreversible mistakes that still affect us today. We get stuck in self-pity.

But there is a bright side to feeling self-pity. The bright side is that what causes the self-pity or envy can be as motivational as it is discouraging. Of course, you could feel temporary discontentment after realizing you missed out on a party or did not take a summer job that you should have, but next time around, you will have surely learned from your mistakes and forsake any chance that you will go through the same emotional agony as the previous time. It is emotional learning through trial and error. So, when our summertime stories and experiences are overtaken by someone who had a better summer, maybe we should not hide our feeling of litost, because it may be the first step to improving our lifestyle or realizing another item on the bucket list.

The same aristocratic values that Nietzsche listed in his philosophical works appear in mainstream society and infiltrate the social dynamic of our own school right now. Summer vacations filled with wealth, intelligence, and beauty are admired over ones that exhibit the opposite. Go talk with a classmate and see for yourself. My prediction is that Western values of effortless glamor are here henceforth. While I cannot tell you how to spend your time out of school, or how to partake in puffed-chest conversation, I can at least propose that if a feeling of litost falls on you this fall, that you capture the feeling and embrace it with all your might, because when you boldly face your dissatisfactions, that is a true mark of maturity and wisdom.