You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, his
manservant, his maidservant, his ox, his donkey, or anything else that is your
neighbor's. (Exodus 20:14)
The Torah obligates us to do things and not do others (positive and negative mitzvot), but rarely legislates thought.
The greatest reward is to be so content with one's own lot that even thinking of envying anyone else never enters one's mind.
In the first years of our marriage, Miriam was home with
three children while Mel earned a pitifully small monthly salary as a teacher.
Before the days of credit cards, we often found ourselves
broke by the fourth week of each month.
We ate leftovers and often bought a bottle of liqueur with
our last $2 to celebrate our wonderful life together.
Half century later, we planned this blog posting in a coffee
shop enjoying café hafukh (upside-down coffee) and an apple-cheese
tart.
We continued our discussion walking in a park enjoying
monkeys' antics and elderly women petting and feeding the park's feral cats.
When we returned home, Snowball greeted us sitting beneath
Mel's parents' wedding picture and ours.