But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.

Watching someone else hold the thing you wanted is its own particular ache, and it is worse than plain disappointment because you have to stand near it and be glad. Their happiness is real and yours is borrowed, and borrowed happiness does not warm you. Part of what stings is the arithmetic you start doing about why them and not you. That arithmetic never comes out clean.

You do not have to perform delight you do not feel. Let the gladness be small and honest, and then give yourself distance from the sight of it. Turn back toward whatever you can still build for yourself, however modest it looks today.