 Reading a year-end article from a blogger I normally agree with, I came across some advice that didn’t sit well. She challenged us to deal with envy by first wishing those whom we envy well, and then moving on. I’m totally down with the first part (more on that below) but I believe that to try and sweep envy aside unexamined is not just difficult-verging-on-impossible, but also wasteful. Envy is an invaluable tool for self-reflection and redirection, particularly for those of us whose lives have proceeded along atypical lines.
Inevitably Enviable One thing I’ve learned from joining a community of driven and high-achieving artists is that a seat at this table comes with a heaping helping of comparison. Comparison has always been a compulsion for me, but back when I was surrounded by geologists or lawyers, it was easier to recognize the folly of measuring my failures as an apple against their achievements as oranges. Now I am an apple among apples, daily aware of how crisp and ripe the others are. These comparisons frequently trigger envy, which I experience as a kind of pull or tug exerted by someone else’s achievements or acquisitions. I have wasted so much time trying to ignore that pull, but eventually I learned that envy has stuff to say and the more I try to shush it, the more insistent it gets. Some sins are like power tools: deadly and useful! Each experience of envy shows me something about who I am and who I might be. Jealousy into Envy But while I entertain and even cultivate envy, I do everything I can to stay free of jealousy. Although the terms are often used interchangeably, jealousy and envy are fundamentally different. Envy is wanting something that someone else has; jealousy is wanting to have it instead of them having it. If I envy your ice cream sandwich, I’d like to have one too; if I’m jealous of your ice cream sandwich, I lie awake at night plotting ways to take it from you. Jealousy springs from a sense of scarcity and/or the habit of score keeping. Perversely, it reinforces itself by depleting your time, energy, and strength. Jealousy is corrosive, diminishing and destabilizing everything it touches. While I’m no stranger to jealousy and, as with envy, I’ve never had much luck at ignoring it, I have learned to convert jealousy into envy through a process of interrogation. I shine a bright light on its pinched little face and demand the facts: Does that person having The Thing really keep me from also having it (or something comparable)? And is The Thing exactly and truly what I want? More often than not, the person with the ice cream sandwich is happy to tell me where to find the ice cream truck. And then when I get there I realize what I actually want is a Choco Taco. Specificity > Scarcity For the most part, when you take a calm step back from feelings of envy, you can see there’s more where that came from: there are more fish in the sea, more cute shoes, more success, and even, more money. But what if you can’t shift into a sense of abundance because it really seems like there’s only one of what you want? Only one job, one first prize, one front cover? What if your friend Jesse is dating someone and it’s burning you up because you think Jesse’s Girl is the one-in-a-billion match without whom your life will be hollow? Ok, so until cloning is an option, there isn’t an abundance of Jesse’s Girls. So the key to learning from this envy is to get more specific. Perhaps what’s tugging on you isn’t Jesse’s Girl, but the relationship between Jesse and JG: the way they look at each other, or swap hats, or cheerfully team up to wash and dry dishes together. In that case, even if you could lure JG away (the jealousy move), it’s unlikely that you, a different person, would be able to generate the same chemistry. However, if you keep the Jesse+JG model in mind as you date other people, you’ll be better equipped to recognize what you’re looking for when you find it. But what if it really is Jesse’s Girl, the unique individual, who exerts such a pull over you? Maybe JG is the funniest person you’ve ever met, around whom you become the second funniest person. Perhaps instead of severing JG’s relationship with Jesse, what you really want is to establish an entirely new relationship, one in which you and JG start writing and performing comedy together and go on to become global superstars, with Jesse himself cheering you both on from the wings. Envy (and evil twin, Jealousy) can lure us into seeing the world as a binary of have and not-have. If we can learn to sit with our envy and get to know it in detail, envy can also suggest beautifully customized ways of having, doing, and being. Envy as Intuition As mentioned above, I believe envy is especially useful for artists and other people whose lives and/or career paths are non-traditional. Not only are our paths generally non-linear and lacking in easy-to-spot signposts or milestones, we tend to meander down them in a bit of a daze, preoccupied by our creative passions. In this lovely daze, it’s easy to forget about what lies beyond our immediate attention, to become diverted or wander in circles. Envy can act as a kind of GPS; it reminds us to look up and check in with our surroundings, it suggests where we should detour, slow down, or take a shortcut. I owe my current position as a Penland Resident Artist to just such a GPS. When I first visited the Residents Studios here in 1997 the tug of envy was so sharp it left me breathless. For the next 23 years I wandered through various jobs and studies, and each time I was reminded of the Residency, the pull of envy gave me an opportunity to course correct. As I got nearer to what I wanted, I experienced more and more envious moments, and therefore more opportunities to fine-tune my aims and approach. Maximum Resonance I remember very little of substance from the year I spent torturing a cello teacher (who eventually protested that she couldn’t, in good conscience, continue taking my money) except for the magic of sympathetic vibration. If you bow a note on a single string and its neighbor is tuned to the same note, the neighbor will hum along without any contact from the bow. A lot of marketing—both commercial and social—aims at getting something in us to vibrate in response to whatever cool/sentimental/aspirational product or life plan is being peddled. Having emotional strings that are stretched and ready to hum along is one of my assets as an artist, but it also makes me ridiculously susceptible to being played, with the result that I’ve cried at cellphone commercials, bought absurd shoes, and enrolled in unsuitable schools. Over the years I’ve learned to recognize when envy provokes only a shallow sympathy within me, like the humming of a single spindly string, and to reserve my attention for responses that are deeper and more genuine. Today, I only take envy seriously if I can feel it resonating in my head, my heart, and my gut. If envy is redirecting me in a way that feels smart, good, and true, it becomes something to aim for; if not, its appeal is shallow and I know from experience that it will quickly pass. Envy of All My Friends During the years I tried to avoid feeling the sting of envy, that often meant avoiding the smart, successful, fun-to-be-around people who might trigger envious feelings. This was self-sabotage cloaked as self-care! It turns out that the people who have what you want are exactly who you want to be around. Like the ice cream sandwich eater above, they are experts who can tell you how they got what you want, and maybe they can tell you how to get it too. Close proximity to people like Jesse and Jesse’s Girl allows you to try before you buy, figuring out what exactly what you want before you make your move. Today, I’m proud to say that everyone I’m close to has one or more attributes that I find enviable, attributes that I can celebrate and mine for inspiration. No-Envy Zone I also believe that each person should have some arena in which they are so rock-solid that the tug of envy finds no purchase. Mine is my art. That’s not to say that I think I’m the best artist, or that I don’t envy other artists’ circumstances, reputations, accolades, or paychecks. I can appreciate, celebrate, and learn from their artwork, but I don’t envy it. Even when my work isn’t going exactly as I would wish, it’s my work: it’s work that only I can do and it’s the only work I want to be doing. I can’t wait to see what I do next—and I hope that every artist feels the same! Like so many of my posts, this has been my attempt to articulate and publicly commit to a course of action. It was useful to me to get it all down and I’d be so happy to hear if anything was useful to you.
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