Self-worth: Is Life Unfair?

Assalamualaikum.

I have this one problem. I am insecure with myself. Why do some people have perfect lives? They have a loving family, wealth, intelligence, etc. I sometimes envy them. I know it's wrong, but it's hard to control.

Please help.

Thank you.

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Waalaikumussalam warahmatullah.

Thank you for your email and for your honesty.

About your situation, I kindly ask that you reconsider your thinking that other people's lives are really perfect. Is it really? I would challenge that mindset by telling myself that if a perfect life does exist, then our Prophet Muhammad should have the most perfect of lives.

But he didn't have a perfect life, did he?

Our Prophet's life was full of tests and challenges, yet he was and still is the closest person to Allah. That is a lesson for us all: no lives are perfect. It might seem perfect in our eyes, but trust me they too are being tested by Allah. Perhaps their tests are different than ours, but they are being tested.

I guess that is my recommendation to you: study the life of our Prophet. You will find that there is no such thing as perfection as long as we are living in this world. That is how this life should be; it is a phase where we are tested and we each have different set of tests.

It is true that other people have what we don't (a nice family, a good job, good health, good exam results, etc) but that doesn't mean that they have everything. They might not have something that we do have.

Perhaps it is time we focus more on what we do have, rather than what we don't.

I hope that helps.

May Allah grant you what is best for you. Ameen.