Envy (It’s Not Easy Being Green)
It’s a brand new year, and I’ve been batting around resolutions. The first one I considered was giving up social media other than to announce books and sales and the like. But then Double Dick Dude came along and blew that one out of the water.
Then I saw an article on envy and I thought to myself, “Oooh. Envy. I hate that. Wish I could give that up for the 2014!” So I read the article, and lo and behold the thing the author was struggling with jealousy over was her friend’s trip to Hawaii.
This struck me as funny for two reasons. 1. I assumed the only thing a person could be jealous about was book sales. And 2. I’m actually in Hawaii right now, and I hadn’t considered that could inspire such envy. Of course Hawaii is gorgeous, but my husband is a nature and wildlife photographer, not to mention his only sibling lives out here. So as much as I appreciate coming to the islands, it’s part of my life. The way hot running water is part of most Americans’ lives, yet they don’t really think about about it unless the power goes out. Or how most people take for granted having four functioning limbs.
What people imagine I’m seeing.
The truth is that cooking, cleaning and watching kids while my husband works is not all that different in Hawaii than it is in Seattle. Some aspects of it are better (downtime involves beaches! Clement weather rocks!) And some aspects are worse. (I’m in remote places with no access to a car at least 7 hours a day, and the kids are far from their friends.) But the article I read made a great point: when we feel envious we don’t imagine that the person is living in *their* reality, we somehow imagine they are in *our* reality, stealing something owed to us.
What I’m actually seeing.
Jealousy makes us imagine that a person is in “my Hawaii” or experiencing “success that should be mine.” We forget that their Hawaii or success or whatever is their experience. And we as humans have basically zero idea about other peoples’ experiences.
Take Facebook. Most people post either joyous stuff that makes it seem like their whole life is awesome, or miserable stuff looking for support and sympathy. Or cats. But it’s impossible to know what that joy or sorrow feels like to them. One person I’m friends with posted recently about her thyroid surgery and she seemed pretty upset about it. Whereas I had the same surgery about 15 years ago, coming out with the same results, and I don’t remember thinking it was such a big deal.
Does that mean she’s wrong? No, of course not. How am I to know what the loss of her gland means to her? Maybe she hates having scars or taking meds. I have no way of knowing what she’s going through. Not really. Even though I’ve gone through the same thing.
Well, it’s like that with success, I’m guessing. If someone has a top selling book, we really have no way of knowing what that experience is like for them. Maybe they worked years and years to get there. Maybe they ignored their kids, or broke ties with a loved one in order to find the time to write. And heck, maybe they really did stumble into success without much effort or fanfare, but even then, we don’t know what that experience feels like for them. Not even if we’ve experienced something similar ourselves.
The funny thing about envy, is that we only really bother to feel jealous of people who have things we *could* ourselves have. Or that we’re close to having. Like, none of us are really jealous of celebrities, because they are so out of our league there’s no shame in not being anything like them. That’s why jealousy is such an insidious thing for authors. We only really feel it for the people who should be our friends and colleagues.
Do I struggle to quell my jealousy for Steven King or JK Rowling? Not hardly! But, man, if my book is #4 on the Amazon Bestseller list for Gay Romance, it’s hard not to be annoyed at whoever is clogging up that #3 space and keeping me off that coveted first line.
The problem is, #3 author is likely my friend. Someone I *should* be happy for. What’s more, I’m sure they’re busy trying not to feel annoyed at whoever is taking up the #2 and #1 spot. It’s a sad fact of life that we’re always looking ahead of us, not behind. At the people who have just a little more, not the multitude of people who have much less.
This article had some interesting suggestions for quelling envy when it rears its ugly head. The author prescribed that when you feel jealous, you should stop imagining yourself in that person’s shoes, but really ground your thoughts in *that person* instead. What does it feel like for Heidi, or Piper or Eli or (insert MM author here) to be where they are, experiencing what they’re experiencing? Channeling our friends, working on empathy and the ability to relate to other people can help us be happy for a person, because we understand they are experiencing *their* experience. Not ours.
the yoga I imagine everyone else is doing
Anywho—this article was written by a practicing Buddhist and is pretty cool stuff. Maybe I’ll read up on Buddhism and think about adopting some practices. Or maybe that’s just Hawaii getting to me, and I’ll think better of it once I’m back in Seattle. 
My family’s yoga on Christmas morning. It may not look like much, but I’ll take it.
Good luck in the New Year, book ho’s!
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