Must be nice.

Three little words.

And yet they evoke such emotion. Envy. Disdain. Jealousy.

FYI, she is not actually happy for you.

Those words are usually uttered when one feels like someone else has something he or she doesn’t.

Like, “Hey, I’m off for a week…going to sleep in, and drink wine at lunch, and binge watch Law & Order SVU.” (That may or may not be my dream vacation.)

“Must be nice,” says the person you ride the train with, who has just taken a mental count of her own vacation days compared to yours, and is convinced you are enjoying some bloated European leave schedule.

As if you enjoying time off somehow made her life, and her long weekend lamenting the fact that she was the only one in the Wisconsin Dells without a tattoo, that much worse.

I worked with a woman several jobs ago, who hated me before she even met me. She had already identified the “in” crowd, and I was not to be in it. (Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt personally victimized by Regina George.)

She also said “must be nice” about 10 times a day. As though she was keeping a running life tally about who was doing better or worse in the actual game of Life than she was. I started making things up for sport to skew the tally. I was going to set the “must be nice” curve. And she was definitely grading on a curve.

To hear me tell it, my material acquisitions alone were like I had won the Showcase Showdown. Twice. I only lasted a year in the job. I nearly died from boredom and the weight of my own manufactured luxury trappings. And when I left, I made the job I was going to sound impossibly big and important. “Have you seen the West Wing? Think C.J. Cregg.”

Must be nice.

Ok, it was not a proud moment. In my defense, my emotional intelligence at that point was around the same as my shoe size.

Years later, I find myself less affected by an intended “must be nice” jab, and instead I am curious as to what drives the response.

Worldwide happiness is not zero sum. If someone else in your universe has something wonderful happen to him or her (new car, new baby, hot date, amazing vacation, promotion, random extra Burrito Supreme in their bag when they pull away from the drive thru), it does not make your life less awesome. (Unless of course you happen to be up for an Oscar with Meryl Streep…must be nice, Meryl.)

Why does the mental scorekeeping only apply to good things? When someone loses a job or a loved one or gets a terrible medical diagnosis, we don’t silently high-five ourselves that it’s not us. We console, we hug, we pray. We bring casseroles.

Why can’t we celebrate the good in others’ lives, with a tray of carbs covered in Durkee onions?

Must be nice, people. That’s a directive, not a negative aside.

Must. Be. Nice.