Green-Eyed Monster

     I was talking with two coworkers.  One was saying she needed to get a new car and asked what I drove.  I said I have a Mazda Miata.

     "I always wanted a convertible!", they both said at once.  They looked upset...and resentful. 

     I was confused by the way they'd phrased their response.  They both said they always wanted a convertible.  Past tense. 

     They were healthy and gainfully-employed.  They'd already mentioned what cars they drove and I knew, for a fact, both were more expensive than mine.  They were probably somewhere in their 50's.  

      "Do you have young grandchildren?" 

      (I thought, maybe, they needed room for extra passengers and car seats.)

      "Not yet."

     "Do you do some kind of car pool?"

     "No." 

     I finally had to state the obvious:  "Well, you guys aren't dead yet."

---

     It kind of made me mad.  They acted like I'd just, accidentally, gotten the car.  But the fact is I had wanted that car since it came out in 1990.  I test drove the first one my nearest Mazda dealership got in, but just couldn't afford a new car at the time.  Then I got based in New York.  Not only could I not afford the car, I also couldn't afford to park it...or to eat...but that's another story.  Later, my life responsibilities required me to, occasionally, pick up and drop off at least two kids, sometimes their friends too.  A two-seater car was out of the question.  And when I finally bought one I looked high and low for the very best deal...and still bought it used.

     So who were they to act like I lucked into it?

---

     But here's the thing that really, really, (really), bothered me.  I knew I had acted just the same way to other people.  From that first test drive in 1990 to 2004, when I finally bought the car, I'd felt real anger and jealousy toward anyone and everyone else who had 'my car'.

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     Yeah.  Envy can be a weird and ugly thing.  We write off other people's jealousy as beneath us...but that's only because they're focused on something that doesn't happen to be our dream.

     In the book "The Artist's Way" Julia Cameron says that we should view envy "as a road map".
Jealousy gives us clues about the things, and circumstances we want in our lives.  We can view it as a powerful tool instead of only as a guilty emotion.

     That idea has been helpful to me.  I've learned to stop wasting any time on making someone else 'bad' for being or doing or having something and just admit maybe I want it too.

---

     I still remember resenting the hell out of a woman at Lowe's.  Michael and I were in the wretched middle of restoring our bombed-out shell of a house.  Our vision of how great it could be was getting harder to see, and we were doubting we'd ever be able to actually live there.

     So I was at Lowe's spending my entire paycheck, yet again, on stuff for the house.  I was wearing a pair of Michael's cast-off pants...with stains, and rips, and dirt all over them.

     This woman in front of me in line was wearing an outfit right out of a magazine.  Head to toe perfection.  Not only was she wearing clean clothes, not only was she wearing expensive clothes, not only were they cute, but she'd probably even had the time and money to have everything tailored!  She looked irritatingly fabulous:  perfect make-up, and her hair was freshly cut, colored, and styled.  (Mine wasn't even freshly washed.)

     I might have 'forgiven' her looking so good.  I mean, obviously, when a person doesn't work and spends all of their time shopping and going to hair appointments, I hope they end up looking good.  But some of us with lives can't do all that...

     The thing that put me completely over the top in my hate and judgement of her was, not her perfectly tasteful and expensive-looking appearance, (with no paint on her anywhere)...but the fact that she had a cart with (get this!) one flat of pansies in it.

     That was it!

     This was all I needed to decide she wasn't just spoiled and lazy, but was, clearly, a complete bitch.

     I hid my embarrassment about my sneakers (where one toe with chipped polish was starting to show through) by thinking about how this helpless and pathetic woman would probably need assistance getting her perfect pansies, into her perfect car, lest she spoil one of her perfectly manicured nails.  (It's painful to write all this, but that was about the gist of my thinking.)

     The bottom line was that she became a symbol of everything I wanted at that moment.  The only thing in the world her house needed was a few pansies!  She had time and money to worry about how she looked, and how her house looked!

     I was spending all my time hauling wheel barrows of lathe and plaster around, and all my money buying un-fun things like sheetrock, and toilets, and a new pry-bar.

     Besides, I had seen some pants like hers and I really wanted them, but couldn't justify spending the money when we still needed a stove, and light fixtures,...and plumbing...

     Just the way those women judged me about the car thing, I came up with all sorts of stories about her.  For all I knew the poor woman worked every day of her life struggling to raise her kids as a single mom.  She might just now, finally, be able to afford to buy nice things for herself.  Or she might be buying flowers to spruce up the house she downsized to after her husband died...  I didn't know her story and, frankly, her story was none of my business.

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     The point is to use these bouts of jealousy.  We don't need to just be mad at someone else, or even just be mad at, and beat up on, ourselves for having the feelings.  We should just ask what the feelings are pointing us towards.   Then we can use that information to start getting a little of what we want.

     I couldn't have a finished house and a gorgeous wardrobe at that point, but I could make a nice dinner at the house we were renting, and stop worrying about our restoration for a second.  I could clean myself up for that dinner.  I could take a vacation from my troubles for, at least, a couple of hours.  

     I've noticed that when I'm able to start working toward my own goals I don't have much time for worrying about what everyone else is doing.  I also have more respect for the work and discipline it takes for anyone to get what they want.

     The older I get the more I'm excited about what we all can do.

     Jealousy, actually, is helpful.  It shines a light on what we want.  We can pay attention to what it says.  We can make small steps.  We can go for it.

     After all, we're not dead yet.