If we envy someone for all the right reasons, we're half way to wisdom

The expression “If we envy someone for all the right reasons, we're half way to wisdom” gives a name to the unusual lesson Lin draws from his final sight of Anand. Its significance lies in the distinction between wanting what another person possesses and recognizing, through envy, a way of meeting suffering that one has not yet learned.

Formulation and Context

Abdel Khader Khan’s saying, recalled by Lin, proposes that envy can be instructive when its object is worthy. The phrase does not celebrate envy as desire for another person’s possessions or good fortune; it makes the reason for envy decisive. In Lin’s memory, the saying becomes a measure of what he sees in Anand: not an advantage Lin can acquire, but a composure he can only recognize and long for.

Anand as the Object of Envy

The thought takes shape in the last image Lin has of Anand. As Lin goes about his criminal work, he remembers Anand bringing his palms together, his radiant smile seeming to become both blessing and prayer. Anand then turns and walks away with his back straight and head high, toward the long years of suffering ahead of him. The image fixes itself in Lin’s mind—not because Anand escapes hardship, but because he appears able to face it with peace and courage.

Lin distinguishes this response from pity and shame. He pities Anand as one chained man might pity another, and he is ashamed that he failed to listen when Anand first tried to warn him about Rasheed. But neither feeling explains the image’s lasting hold. Lin identifies the deeper feeling as envy: he wants Anand’s self-understanding and calm communion with fate, qualities that the approaching suffering does not seem to take from him.

Meaning and Lasting Significance

The saying’s claim remains deliberately incomplete. Lin hopes that worthy envy can carry a person farther than halfway to wisdom, but he does not claim that he has reached the destination. A lifetime after the encounter at the wire, he still envies Anand and longs for his composure with all his flawed and striving heart. The expression thus links an aphorism from Abdel Khader Khan to a continuing measure of Lin’s own unfinished understanding: wisdom begins in recognizing another person’s courage, while the desire to attain such peace persists.