Try Not To Should On Yourself
When you zoom out, we’re all samey.
What Is Envy, Really?
Envy is that uncomfortable prickly sensation that seems to bristle up out of nowhere, usually a short time after observing someone else’s prize or achievement, and registering the sense that you should somehow have what they have. A wise supervisor once advised me: Try not to should on yourself.
You’re going about your day, totally content, until you notice that Bridget, who traveled to Iceland just before the pandemic, is reposting her photos on Instagram and reliving that tired old glory that earned her so many likes. Yes, the ice caves and the northern lights and the solitude were and still are all very magical, and she’s become a real photog over the years, but Iceland is so ten years ago! You get to thinking how you need to travel again, and although Mexico City is still fresh with good art and you’d like to go back, it’s also raging with the virus. But Portugal would be new to you, even if the early appropriators are already over it, and you heard you could get citizenship after having a residence there for five years. You think yes, Portugal is the place to be! Firmly, definitively, and almost inexplicably, you decide to move there this summer.
Morbid Curiosity Or Genuine Concern?
Half out of spite and half out of curiosity, you DM Bridget to catch up—you haven’t directly spoken with her since before Iceland—but it’s really only to fish about her romantic status and see if she’s still with the same guy with whom, you assume, she must have gone on such an adventurous, scenic, iconic trip. Meanwhile, you plan your extended Airbnb in Portugal for your midsummer break, after you delight in how dirt cheap the flights are now—even though you had resolved in January to be above taking a vacation this summer because it would be wasteful and selfish during a worldwide pandemic.
Swallowing Envy
If we somehow manage to not manifest our envy into some kind of actionable purchase, we might instead just go on the attack inward, and get twisted and pulled into a knotty, rotten mood for our partner or coworker to steer around and avoid. Not one person hasn’t suffered from irritability roused by envy, at one time or another. Wanting what someone else has is unflattering and slightly tantrum-throwing at its more basic level, and defiling and closet-ragey in a more heightened state—often teeming with hostility, unassuageable bitterness, and express anger that can easily tumble into blind rage, resulting in acts of violence.
Liking Your Assumptions
This kind of emotional spinout could result from simply liking a repost of an old college bestie’s trip that she had taken with her mom before the treatments—who is now in remission—you learn through Bridget’s expressive and generous DM back to you. She had not taken a romantic trip with her boyfriend, after all, which you had assumed, the first time you had liked her post. Bridget confesses that she knows old reposts are so boring but she had only hoped to revisit and share a little natural wonder during a time of collective separation and grief. Your college friend’s repost was her own unconscious celebration of her mother’s healing and survival, and somehow inspired you to move to Portugal in a pandemic. You don’t bring up Portugal with Bridget.
The Fear Of Being Unworthy
Why do we unleash our bad feelings about what others do have—and what we don’t have—by going on some kind of materialistic scavenger hunt, or self-attack for not being somehow more of what we should be? We hop online and window shop for things we can’t afford to charge, gadgets and upgrades we feel should make us happier, younger, fresher, more beautiful, and our actionable purchases do in the short term successfully give us that dopamine rush, but if our inspiration was negative to start, what is our net gain? We can usually intellectually grasp that others with more means have either worked for it, or are privileged by some sort of royal happenstance, and yet we still want to keep up with the richy Joneses, rather than measuring ourselves against an internal arc of self betterment, which is difficult to quantify and nearly impossible to capture in selfies.
What Makes Us So Angry About Our Status?
The question to come back to, every time you find yourself wanting to figuratively tear the face off of your neighbor for having something you want or could somehow better use, is to try to softly unpack, non-judgmentally, what it is that you might be angry about? What are you not prioritizing? How are you forgetting to see your own needs or failing meet them, and why are you instead opting to get grabby, like an overgrown toddler? And why, pray tell, has your whole life and Instagram feed become nothing but chopped liver?
Smile, Don’t Smile
Social media is a breeding ground for envy, we all know. We proudly curate and present our good taste, funny faces, inspiring journeys, political crusades, and tangible measures of self worth—all on display to be adored or ignored. Look confident or else you are pathetic or boring. If you only look and don’t post, then you are the pejorative lurker, and that’s not playing fairly. Don’t be too earnest.
New TikTok Challenge: Show Me You’re Suffering Without Saying You’re Suffering
Rare is the post of depletion, depression, anger, grief, lack, or stasis, although you’ll notice how people do reach out and help pick up those courageous individuals who pay tribute to their dying—they are offered a hand just as surely as someone who has face-planted in a mosh pit. Loss is the one green light to share in suffering, and we’re fortunate on social media in this one important way, as well as in sounding any siren for social justice. Connecting on social media is not all bad, even if we sometimes have to believe that to convince ourselves to disconnect.
We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful
Were we raised to mentally attack the happiness of others? Is it unresolved sibling rivalry—latent for only children—that summons the not-cute but competitive, pouting, unlikable brat in us, who wants to throw a fit for not getting the ice cream cone? Why can’t we be happy with what we do have, and why is our kind of having not good enough? There are no easy answers, just endless difficult questions.
Envy Killed Abel
Abel was able, and was favorited by the bearded man upstairs, and that bothered Cain so much that he canceled Abel, for good, out of envy, in the first cold blooded biblical murder of all time. The medieval everlasting punishment for the deadly sin of envy, in case you’re wondering, was to be put in eternal freezing water. A person suffering envy already feels iced out, and punishment for giving in to envy was an eternal helping of more of the same.
Drop The Attitude and Get With The Gratitude
The same healing salve that soothes all uncomfortable feelings works on envy, too. Count your blessings that have hatched, as well as those of others. Be happy and proud of the gains and accomplishments of others, or at least strive for indifference, especially for those you love. Let someone else shine for a change. It’s not personal! Nobody you envy is doing anything to you, they are doing something for them. Aim for neutrality if you can’t bring yourself to be appreciative of someone else’s attempt to share. You have to wonder, though, if you you can’t ever be happy for someone else, could you ever be happy for yourself?
