Addiction #29 – Envy (04/30/12)
LICKING THE RAZOR’S EDGE
Addiction #29 – the challenge of ENVY
“When you look at someone and long for something that is not yours or that you cannot have, you simply know deep inside that something is amiss. It’s an absence of self; a profound loss of heartbeat.” ~ inspired by Nadege Richards
“Envy is a littleness of spirit, a distorted view which cannot see beyond itself, and, if it does not occupy the entirety of consciousness, feels itself excluded.” ~ inspired by William Haslitt
“As a moth slowly gnaws a garment, so does envy consume a Soul.” ~ inspired by John Chrysostom
Envy is the resentment we feel when we lack another person’s perceived level of achievement, status or wealth — and it can come as no surprise that all of us have felt this emotion at one time or another in our lives.
Indeed, our human minds are programmed to acquire what others in our “herd” possess, our human bodies are programmed to accumulate wealth in order to survive, and our human emotions are manipulated by a mass media that is constantly inundating us with images of things that we need to possess (yet most often do not yet have) in order to be happy.
Of course, the issue here is not whether we feel envious from time to time (most of us do – at least on occasion), but rather whether or not we are addicted to our envious resentments.
It is important to realize first & foremost that the envy mentioned in this article is more than merely the commonplace coveting of our neighbor’s possessions or the dramatic lusting over our neighbor’s partner. As with most of the addictions covered in this series, envy affects our lives in many subtle yet powerful ways, many of them with which we remain unfamiliar.
RECOGNIZING our own ADDICTION to ENVY
Envy is a quiet yet potent emotional cancer that adversely affects many areas of our lives, and before we can cleanse our lives of its dis-ease, we must first identify where it has taken hold. To help you do so, consider honestly answering the following questions:
Do you enjoy “myth-busting” or debunking another person’s beliefs?
Do you have ambitious goals?
Do you feel like your life lacks Purpose?
Do you discount others’ worth whenever they are complimented?
Are you disapproving of “cheats”, “criminals”, “idiots” or “losers”?
Do you refuse to tolerate mediocrity or ignorance?
Do you believe that perfection is possible?
Do you refuse to “go out of your way” to help others with their “minor problems”; difficulties that they can “very well manage themselves”?
Do you find yourself adopting the mannerisms or speech patterns of friends, co-workers or characters you see on TV?
Do you emulate (or dream of emulating) others who are “successful” or “powerful” or beautiful”?
Do you play the lottery or fantasize about winning the lottery?
Do you complain about rainy, cold or blustery weather?
Do you hide personal failures?
Do you get visibly frustrated or angry when things don’t go your way?
Do you compare or contrast your life to the lives of others?
Do you strive to “make life better”, “improve yourself” or “solve problems”?
Do you hope for “a better future”?
Do you have faith in your own “personal salvation”?
Do you have insurance policies that protect you against “potential disasters”?
Do you have difficulty showing thankfulness towards or expressing gratitude for your bosses, coaches, teachers, politicians or any other authority figures?
Do you first and foremost take care of the needs of you & yours?
Do you have personal goals related to status, income, wealth?
Do you desire to be well-respected &/or appreciated by others?
Do you feel as though you have “less than” others in your life?
Do you resent the success of your friends, your enemies or your competitors?
Do you feel indifference to the successes or failures of those around you?
Do you tease others about their advantages, talents or triumphs?
Do you attempt to co-create, manifest or otherwise generate more wealth, love or happiness in your life?
Do you get angry or depressed when a rival sports team beats your personal favorite?
Do you feel that others do not deserve the rewards, benefits or blessings they receive?
Do you blame God, the government or other people for your disadvantages, challenges or misfortunes?
If someone forbids you from doing something, do you desire to do it anyway — “just to show them”?
Do some people you know get preferential treatment?
Do you feel sometimes (or a lot of the time) that “life is unfair”?
Do you complain when things go wrong or gossip about others who make mistakes?
Chances are that you answered “yes” to at least a few of these queries. Of course, doing so does not make you a “bad person” at all. It merely makes you a human being; responding in “normal” ways to life’s incredible array of challenges and responding “understandably” to many of life’s more intense temptations.
That having been said, being envious is not a given. Even though we are all sorely tempted to be envious of our friends, associates and enemies, we remain conscious beings, and as such, we all can choose the way we respond to every happenstance and every situation.
And yet why choose differently? What is so dangerous about regularly succumbing to envious thoughts or regularly engaging envy-inspired actions?
The CONSEQUENCES of our ADDICTION to ENVY
Envy is more than just the dis-ease we feel when wanting something we cannot have, and it is more than merely wishing we had more or that we could “catch up with the Joneses” … Envy carries with it a pair of devastating consequences; consequences that destabilize our entire lives, and that ultimately destroy any hope we might have for finding true Happiness therein.
#01) ENVY ENTRENCHES ENMITY …
Essentially, envy is a feeling of thinly veiled anger towards another person – a “mini-hatred” that comes from us not only desiring what another person has, but also feeling like that person is keeping us from having the same. This mentality has us developing subtle, yet very powerful, subconscious feelings of enmity towards all others who are perceived to already have what we wish we had, but do not yet possess. Often without even realizing it, we begin to believe everyone experiencing even a moderate level of success to be our adversaries.
Of course, such perceptions are always warped, and never accurately represent how life truly is for those others. Even though it appears to us that the “wealthy” and the “lucky” and the “beautiful” and the “powerful” have fantastic lives – lives that we often wished we could have ourselves, they too have their own unique sets of challenges, traumas, trials and difficulties. In fact, it is often because of their very “successes” that these people experience highly intensified feelings of loneliness, fear and meaninglessness. As such, it is THEY who actually end up suffering even more than those of us who do not possess their level of “good fortune”.
And yet, because we have chosen to envy what they have, we tend to treat them as competitors, instead of reaching out to them to Care.
Because we have chosen to crave what we lack – instead of looking to share what we already have, our lives, instead of being bathed in a soothing shower of gratitude, become overfilled with the cold fear of poverty.
#02) ENVY SOLIDIFIES SADNESS …
Deep-seated Happiness – first & foremost – requires that we choose to be grateful for our lives. And it is no surprise that this gratitude cannot exist alongside feelings of envy. Indeed, we cannot feel thankful for anything we do have, while simultaneously desiring anything that we do not.
And this is as true for our thoughts about who we are as it is for our beliefs about what we own. From a very early age, many of us are taught to compare ourselves to others. As opposed to recognizing our unique personal gifts (and appreciating them – and thereby our Selves – by using them to Care for others), we are instead encouraged to correct our “faults” & identify our “weaknesses”. We yearn not only for what others have, but also wish we were as “wonderful” or talented as they appear to be.
As a consequence of these thoughts, a ridicule of others & a rejection of self begin to dominate our days, and ripples of gratitude are replaced by waves of melancholy.
In our jaded eyes, successful strangers become enemies, successful friends become estranged associates, and successful enemies become evil incarnate. And the more envious we choose to become, the more we isolate ourselves those others.
As a consequence, our relationships – all of them, the good as well as the bad – become brittle and begin to crumble. We judge our own lives as “deficient” in comparison to the lives of those deemed to be “more successful” or “more fortunate”, and we label most everyone else as “outcasts” — “deficient” people, leading lives less worthy than our own. And in the process, we lose touch with everything that is deep and intimate and Meaning-full in life …
Sadness enters through envy’s open door, takes up residence in our minds, and eventually infests everything we do and feel.
“Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” ~ unknown
“Envy is the religion of the mediocre. It comforts us first, then it soothes our worries, and finally it rots our very souls, allowing us to justify our petty meanness and superficial greed until we – after labeling them anew as ‘justice’ & ‘success’ — believe those vices to be virtues.” ~ inspired by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
“You can feel anything, and yet I guarantee you that if you allow yourself to feel envy and then to swim in it, that envy will destroy you and the people around you … I can assure you that once you give yourself to envy, you will be eaten alive.” ~ inspired by C. Joybell C.
“Lust is our newfound way of life. Envy is just a nudge towards another sale. Even in our relationships we consume each other, each of us looking for what we can get out of the other. Our appetites are often satisfied at the expense of those around us. In a dog-eat-dog world we lose the biggest part of our humanity.” ~ inspired by Jon Forman
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