Yes, our good old friend, envy. As a kid, I envied the guys with the new bicycle or BB gun. As a teen, it was the super jock with all the girls and friends. Later, the smartest guy in the department, and then the most successful. Now, the person who, by some miracle beyond my reach, hits the New York Times best-seller list.
It's always lurking around the corner, and it can eat people up - even, in a few extreme cases, to have women steal another's baby. In many traditional cultures, envy causes the Evil Eye, which can cause illness, disaster, or death in those who are envied, so much so that mothers of healthy children in some middle east nations hide their babies beneath blankets when they go out in public. I like to think that I never carried it to an extreme (internally - no knives or evil eye here), but that has probably not always been the case. It is almost always aimed at people who have what we think we want, which causes the dissatisfaction that is envy.
But not always. I have mentioned before how it has become clear to me that some people are just better than I - not richer or better looking or more successful (although there are, of course), but simply better human beings. And surprisingly, this "better" does not cause envy, or at least not the poisonous kind that leads to self-hatred or contempt.
I was reminded of this when my wife and I were walking on a trail an hour north of our place, treading on thin mud to look off cliffs shrouded in fog. She was going to help out at a funeral this Thursday, one for a woman of 86 who died fairly suddenly and without an exceptional amount of pain (as far as we know). Nothing unusual, then, but when she tried to describe to me who she was, she said, "you know, the one with the [mentally challenged] daughter who always had her hair done up with ribbons." Then she went on. "You know, she started a home for these kids and has helped care for them for decades. She's the one who always had the brightest smile, always pleasant."
And she was right. She was one of those women who, although I did not know of her greater efforts, always had struck me as one of those "better" people. Knowing then what else she did left me feeling even more helplessly beneath her. The idea of caring for several mentally challenged adults all the time takes my breath away. Children are one thing - as much a nuisance as they can be, they are growing and becoming, and like any farmer, we might not mind the bother of care because we are expectant of the results. Mentally deficient children, however, are (from my perspective) going nowhere. They will not grow into something else. And yet this woman not only took what she got from her pregnancy, but took on several more. In spite of this, she was a far kinder, and happier, person than I have ever been.
This kind of better elicits no dark envy, however. On the face of it, that might be because we would not want that cross to bear, and so toss out cheap kudos to someone like her with a sigh of relief - thank God it's not me! But it seems there is something else going on. She was happier in her burden than I without, and would be, I suspect, without the burden as well. Instead, she was one of those very few whose good deeds did not come from obligation or a desire to chalk up heavenly, or social, credits, but whose bearing and deeds came from inside; one of those whose behavior emanated from an interior love simply and unpretentiously.
It is that kind of "better" that raises a different kind of envy - one that seeks to improve the self in a way that improves all others naturally, without striving or resentment. It is this kind of envy that makes us understand what that overused word, love, really means. And it is that kind of love that the religions talk of; the kind that so dominates the interior landscape that there can be no fight or hard-won choice to do good. It just comes naturally.
Instead of making us feel disgruntled, this kind of envy makes us feel better, for we see in it a direction for ourselves and for the world. It makes us understand what true spirituality is all about and what it's true goal is - a happiness within that causes happiness without, a natural expression of the true spirit. There is no room in such people for holier -than - thou condemnations or guilt trips, nor for saintly self-satisfaction over burdens shouldered, but only for their unsullied selves. Such people elicit the only envy I am proud of, and the only kind in which I feel blessed for its arousal. For I then know that somewhere in the murk that is me, there is this that burns as a hidden light that is only waiting to be released. FK
It's always lurking around the corner, and it can eat people up - even, in a few extreme cases, to have women steal another's baby. In many traditional cultures, envy causes the Evil Eye, which can cause illness, disaster, or death in those who are envied, so much so that mothers of healthy children in some middle east nations hide their babies beneath blankets when they go out in public. I like to think that I never carried it to an extreme (internally - no knives or evil eye here), but that has probably not always been the case. It is almost always aimed at people who have what we think we want, which causes the dissatisfaction that is envy.
But not always. I have mentioned before how it has become clear to me that some people are just better than I - not richer or better looking or more successful (although there are, of course), but simply better human beings. And surprisingly, this "better" does not cause envy, or at least not the poisonous kind that leads to self-hatred or contempt.
I was reminded of this when my wife and I were walking on a trail an hour north of our place, treading on thin mud to look off cliffs shrouded in fog. She was going to help out at a funeral this Thursday, one for a woman of 86 who died fairly suddenly and without an exceptional amount of pain (as far as we know). Nothing unusual, then, but when she tried to describe to me who she was, she said, "you know, the one with the [mentally challenged] daughter who always had her hair done up with ribbons." Then she went on. "You know, she started a home for these kids and has helped care for them for decades. She's the one who always had the brightest smile, always pleasant."
And she was right. She was one of those women who, although I did not know of her greater efforts, always had struck me as one of those "better" people. Knowing then what else she did left me feeling even more helplessly beneath her. The idea of caring for several mentally challenged adults all the time takes my breath away. Children are one thing - as much a nuisance as they can be, they are growing and becoming, and like any farmer, we might not mind the bother of care because we are expectant of the results. Mentally deficient children, however, are (from my perspective) going nowhere. They will not grow into something else. And yet this woman not only took what she got from her pregnancy, but took on several more. In spite of this, she was a far kinder, and happier, person than I have ever been.
This kind of better elicits no dark envy, however. On the face of it, that might be because we would not want that cross to bear, and so toss out cheap kudos to someone like her with a sigh of relief - thank God it's not me! But it seems there is something else going on. She was happier in her burden than I without, and would be, I suspect, without the burden as well. Instead, she was one of those very few whose good deeds did not come from obligation or a desire to chalk up heavenly, or social, credits, but whose bearing and deeds came from inside; one of those whose behavior emanated from an interior love simply and unpretentiously.
It is that kind of "better" that raises a different kind of envy - one that seeks to improve the self in a way that improves all others naturally, without striving or resentment. It is this kind of envy that makes us understand what that overused word, love, really means. And it is that kind of love that the religions talk of; the kind that so dominates the interior landscape that there can be no fight or hard-won choice to do good. It just comes naturally.
Instead of making us feel disgruntled, this kind of envy makes us feel better, for we see in it a direction for ourselves and for the world. It makes us understand what true spirituality is all about and what it's true goal is - a happiness within that causes happiness without, a natural expression of the true spirit. There is no room in such people for holier -than - thou condemnations or guilt trips, nor for saintly self-satisfaction over burdens shouldered, but only for their unsullied selves. Such people elicit the only envy I am proud of, and the only kind in which I feel blessed for its arousal. For I then know that somewhere in the murk that is me, there is this that burns as a hidden light that is only waiting to be released. FK
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