I recently read a person’s justification for disassociating from an organisation with which they had been affiliated. There were various reasons expressed for the decision to disassociate. A primary one related to a slipping of standards. Another related to a dogmatic implementation of certain rules that was not perceived as being effective. The reasons were well-explained and I could understand the person’s choice to break their ties. But, in amongst the reasons given, was a comment that the head of the organisation being broken away from was someone wealthy sitting in a privileged position in a beautiful home in a beautiful part of the world. This comment was redolent with envy.
Envy is irrational:
The person explaining their decision had moved from the rational to the irrational – from asserting that the organisation was no longer serving them to a complaint that the founder of the organisation was rich while they were not. That envy of another’s position, their abilities or material situation does not make for wise decision-making. Envy does not make for connection. Envy gnaws away at a person.
In Shakespeare’s play Henry VI, the character Exeter says “When Envy breeds unkind division: There comes the ruin, there begins confusion.” Exeter is speaking of the jealous behaviour present in the royal court with different lords harbouring “rancorous spite” and “the discord of nobility”. Envy breeds division. It creates confusion. Envy is the source of ruin. Strong language but true.
Differences in ability are a fact of life:
There can be no escaping the fact that each of us has different attributes. I am intelligent. I am of regular appearance. I am physically capable. Yet, my elder brother is noticeably more intelligent. He was a better sportsman than I, especially in the field of long-distance running, a sport in which our father was engaged and to which he introduced us. The differences in our abilities has been a factor in my life. I have experienced some envy at times. More, it has been a perception that my parents’ love for me was conditional upon me achieving to the same degree as my brother. A flawed perception but one I held nonetheless.
The difference in abilities is inherent. Difference is the given. The issue is our management of the differences and our ability to reconcile ourselves to the differences, to celebrate our own accomplishments and to value others for their accomplishments.
You will have some experience of envy to draw on from your life. It may be envy of someone who was smarter than you at school. The envy may relate to someone who won the affections of a person to whom you were attracted. The envy may relate to someone with greater material wealth than you – a higher paid job, a fancy car, a bigger, flasher place to live. Take a moment to reflect on the feeling envy evokes.
Feelings associated with envy are not pleasant:
The feelings are not sweet. They are bitter. Envy does not create feelings of union and connection. The person of whom you are envious sits separate from you. Your envy makes of them an enemy, at worst, but no friend, even at best. You may want harm to come to the other person as some species of levelling fate. Feelings of envy create the sensation that there is something wrong or lacking with you.
Envy brings out the worst in you. By generating bitter feelings, separation from others, the desire for harm to come to others and a perspective in which you are lacking, deficient and not good enough, envy shapes you in the worst way. Do you enjoy those feelings? Do you want to be defined by those feelings? Do you want your legacy in terms of the way you show up for others to be one associated with all those negative qualities?
Acceptance trumps envy:
How can you deal with envy and make a better way? First, accept and reconcile yourself to the fact that we have differing abilities and other people having greater abilities than you is inevitable. Align yourself to that fundamental truth. In yoga, I am proficient. In my circle, I am one of the more able practitioners. Yet, I have encountered many who are more, even much more proficient at poses than am I. In my early days of yoga when my experience was limited and my knowledge of what constituted yoga was small, I was envious of others’ poses.
In fact, there was a variation of locust pose where I took the view that I had to compete with the most able to be more proficient than them. I feel I was egged on in this by the teachers, several of whom would ask me to do demonstrations of the pose in class. In pursuit of what I thought was impressive depth in the pose I adopted a cheat mechanism which levered greater ranges of movement in the pose at the expense of essential foundations. My envy of others caused me to lose integrity in my practice.
No teacher called me on my cheat technique – they kept asking me to demonstrate/show off to other students. But I felt something was wrong. I looked at images of people in deep expressions of this particular variation of locust pose. I noticed where I was not performing the pose with solid foundations and how my departure from solid foundations was a cheat. I stopped cheating. My poses became less outwardly impressive in their range and apparent depth. No-one asked me to demonstrate. But I felt right.
It was a great lesson for me – first, not to cheat in my poses and, looking back on my initial motivations, to be humble and set aside envy. In so doing, rather than making the other students rivals in my pursuit of being the best at that pose, I could appreciate their accomplishments and humbly acknowledge where my own limits lay.
Accept yourself as whole - there is nothing missing:
An aspect of the experience of envy is the feeling that one is not enough. A means to free yourself from feelings of envy is to be happy to be yourself and to value yourself as you are and as you are not. Choose to like yourself. Observe yourself and your circumstances with no sense of lack. As a forty-two year old I had the experience of dropping my own hostility towards myself and discovering that a shift in my perspective upon myself opened up a shift in my outlook towards others.
Consider, also, that when we envy someone we only know a small part of the story. There are people who seem to have a lot and may be the subject of others’ envy but they reach a point in their life where they count the cost. They may have great material wealth but it has come at a cost in terms of their relationships and their conscience. If our envy is of A for the love B gives to them, then our envy affects our relationship with A because of what B feels which is outside of our control.
Controlling the uncontrollable is futile:
Trying to control that which is outside of our control is a futile and draining experience. Can we change the circumstances of our birth so that instead of being born in penury we are born with a silver spoon in our mouth? No. Can we change our appearance from short and squat in physique to tall and slender in physique? No. Can we alter our brain so that we are capable of being a brain surgeon rather than a brick-layer? No. There is so much that is outside of our control that may generate envy in us. And it is entirely pointless.
Drop envy. Right along with it, drop feelings of hostility and division from those you envy. Drop the struggle to control the unchangeable and immutable. Drop the sense that you are lacking. Adopt a feeling of contentment in yourself and an acceptance of your present circumstances. Apply your thoughts and energies constructively in building relationships and in creating what you can with what you have. Do not make “envy and crooked malice nourishment” in your life. Ultimately, there will always be something that you cannot have, no matter how much you do have.
The Mirror of Erised:
In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone J. K. Rowling introduced her hero to the Mirror of Erised. The mirror shows one’s heart’s desire. Harry Potter, an orphan, sees himself with his parents. His friend, Ron, the fourth among five children with three elder brothers, sees himself being congratulated by his headmaster and surrounded by accolades of accomplishment at school. Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter’s headmaster, tells Harry that the most contented of people would look in the mirror and see only themselves. Such a state of contentment, undisturbed by any feeling of want, is a state free of envy and its negative manifestations. Gaze upon yourself as you are now as if gazing into the Mirror of Erised and seeing only yourself.