Simply lecturing about “human nature” carries no real weight of warning. Stories, on the other hand, reach somewhere deeper — so let me tell you a few.
Jealousy
There was a young woman named Xiaohua. After graduation, she chose to stay in her hometown rather than leave, living with her parents and making handcrafted goods. Her income wasn’t high, but she brought in five or six thousand a month — more than enough for a comfortable life back home.
Her mother was genuinely happy to have a daughter like her. What parent wouldn’t want their child to live easily and without stress? So she’d occasionally share little updates with the neighbors, though nothing like the auntie upstairs, who spent every day bragging about how her son worked at some big company in a major city.
Then one day, Xiaohua noticed something strange. Someone was showing up in her comment section over and over, @-ing other users, complaining that her products were poor quality and riddled with problems — and making thinly veiled remarks about her personal conduct.
She looked more closely. The profile picture looked familiar. She clicked through — and there it was: the upstairs auntie’s smiling travel photos.
Resentment
Xiaohu was a remarkably hardworking young man. His academic credentials were modest, but in real estate brokerage, he had built a genuinely impressive track record.
Part of it was his genuine warmth with every client. Part of it was his relentless discipline — posting short videos every single day to showcase his listings and explain what made each one special.
Year after year, the effort compounded. Despite his age, his client base had grown substantial. Whether it was rentals, sales, or renovations, the older folks in the area trusted him and came to him first.
Because he had once been caught in the rain himself, he was willing to hold the umbrella for others. At the office, Xiaohu regularly handed off smaller deals that were close to closing to younger colleagues he liked — a gesture of generosity to help them get started.
Then one late night while working at his desk, he overheard the very colleague he’d helped whispering to two newer employees:
“Oh, that Xu guy? He just tosses me the garbage deals to clean up. I’ve been doing all his dirty work — that’s how he got where he is today.”
Greed
Linlin was an ordinary girl from a lane-side neighborhood (the longtang of Shanghai’s old residential alleys). Her parents loved her deeply — but as honest, dutiful factory workers, their way of showing love was to deprive themselves of everything so she could have more.
To change the course of her life, she clawed her way out of the worst-ranked school through sheer effort, all the way to Fudan University. After graduation, she pushed through countless sleepless nights until she finally landed a position at the Asian headquarters of a Fortune 500 company.
From there, she kept climbing. And at every step, she used whatever she had — the very best she could offer — to give back to parents who had given up so much raising her.
Once her success became visible, her uncle’s family began appearing at every holiday dinner with the same story on repeat, making sure everyone within earshot could hear:
“Ah, Linlin — we always had such a soft spot for her growing up! We used to buy her stationery, buy her clothes. Now we get to share in her good fortune too~”
But what Linlin actually remembered was this: apart from taking her to KFC once as a child — and handing her a KFC-branded pencil case that her older cousin had already discarded — that uncle’s family had never shown her a single moment of genuine care. And fifteen years ago, the uncle had borrowed fifty thousand yuan from her mother, claiming it was to fund the cousin’s overseas studies.
He still hadn’t paid it back.