On Envy 

XXX

2024.01.21

WOW. Published late today.

I’m on the Pacific Coast right now, so, for me, this went out at roughly the “same time” as usual, just in a different time zone. That being said, I want reading this to be part of your Sunday morning routine, so I’ll think about stabilizing the release regardless of the time zone I happen to be in.

If you have any thoughts on what time you’d like to receive this by on Sunday morning, please let me know.

Writing as Emotional Regulation

Writing about negative emotions is hard. 

I also feel that if I do so without a positive resolution, then I contribute to the general environment of noise pollution. If you’re communicating negative emotions to the world without having reached a “resolution” to them, I can think of three principle reasons: 

1. You are seeking emotional support.

2. You are looking for attention.

3. You believe that the negative emotions should be shared with others.

Re each of these reasons: 

1. I would personally not use a public newsletter to seek emotional support.

2. I guess, as a writer, you’re sort of always writing for “attention” to you, your ideas, or both, but I certainly don’t want more attention on hate or greed or short term thinking or envy. 

3. In some art and media, sharing negative feelings of grief and pain can be therapeutic, but can also be dangerous if the message overly romanticizes those emotions.

That’s a long winded way of saying I don’t believe that I have a good reason to regularly write things that are “negative,” whatever that even means.

That’s one of the reasons I enjoy writing this on a weekly basis–it forces me to get out of negative feedback loops. I’m relatively bad at not writing from the heart, so if I’m feeling unduly negative when I go to write this, I’ll write negatively. Well, as discussed, I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m effectively forced to talk myself out of whatever negative emotions I’m feeling. This week, you get part of that conversation.

Envy vs Aspiration

Envy is aspiration minus action. 

If you focus on how much you want something but aren’t going to do anything about it, that’s envy. On the other hand, if you want something and are putting in the effort required to receive it, that’s a better use of the word aspiration. 

Desire itself is not a bad thing; it is one of the drivers of capitalism. If I want a thing that I don’t have, how can I use the creative forces and supply of effort at my disposal to drag it up and out of the pool of fantasy and into reality? Yay to capitalism!

Envy is a cousin of entitlement. You want a thing without accounting for its cost; you think you should just have it. Moreover, even if you’re making a practice of acting aspirationally, it can be easy to forget that sometimes things don’t come to you by the time that you think they should have. Then, envy can take root. 

Things that I want that I don’t have

Yesterday, I was thinking about things that I want that I don’t have. Nothing wrong with that. However, I was starting to get envious.

If you want a house on and island but don’t have one, then envious thoughts might look like:

• If only I was born in ancient Greece, island acquisition would’ve been so much easier.

• I work hard, an island house shouldn’t cost so much.

• Why does Larry Ellison get one? I still don’t understand what Oracle even does…

If you want a loving romantic relationship, then envious thoughts might look like: 

• Why does he have it, and not me? 

• No girls like me!

• It’s not fair, I have to work harder to be desirable.

Note that these thoughts aren’t in the vein of “I should study Larry Ellison’s business practices to see how he was able to afford an island,” or “I wonder what people in loving relationships had to work on together to be happy.” The envious thoughts are devoid of any impetus for action or desire to change. 

It’s all talk, no game.

What I want that I do Have

A good counter to envy is taking stock of what you do have. I was writing the first part of this newsletter in my head while driving when I looked up and realized I was cruising through a dream: 

Wow, okay, even if there are things that I don’t have that I want, there are things that I do have that I want–shocker. 

And, some of those things are pretty damn cool. And, what’s more, I have actively made the decision, over and over again, to have some of these things at the expense of other things that I also want. I have made and continue to make trade offs. 

There are things that other people have that I want, like the certainty and stability that come with a real job, but if I made the decisions to have taken those things, then I wouldn’t be couch surfing in the bay while learning how to sell a product that we’re defining as we go along. Again, yay capitalism.

I made that trade-off, and I’m going to keep making it every day.

I chose the thing I wanted more than the other thing I wanted. Yes, you can want two things that are sometimes at odds with each other, and that’s okay. Life is a series of trade-offs. 

Just as my freedom comes at the cost of taking responsibility for myself and a company, other things that I want but don’t have involve trade-offs, too. And those trade-offs are made each and every day with the actions that you take. The big trade-offs are really just a mountain of small trade-offs.

The Envy Test

If you don’t have something right now, but you desire it, it can be sobering to ask yourself why. In a systematic way, of course.

I present to you the envy test:

1) What is the cost of the thing I want?

-->If it is higher than you’re willing to pay, stop envying.

-->If it is lower than you are willing to pay, proceed to step 2.

2) Have I turned it down in the past?

-->If yes, stop envying, find out why you turned it down. Maybe proceed if you turned it down for a good reason at the time.

-->If you haven’t turned it down, proceed to step 3.

3) Have I started paying now?

-->If no, stop envying and start paying. 

-->If yes, stop envying and keep paying.

You’ll be pleased to see that there isn’t a way to complete the envy test and still be envying by the end—my finest work.

Step 3 is interesting. You can always start paying for the thing you want now. For my part, I do want a long term, loving, romantic relationship. I’m investing in that now by focusing on the relationships I do have and making an effort to be open to people I meet.  I’ll just keep paying.

As for the island, I exited the envy step at step 1. It’d be cool, and I hope I can afford one at some point, but I’m not going to be heartbroken if I can’t.

A nuance is that the cost changes over time based on what resources are most efficient for you to expend. In layman’s term, if I were a billionaire, I would get to step 3 and buy an island.

Envy

Two definitions of envy: 

Envy is an incomplete thought. 

Envy is desiring something without accounting for its cost.

Sometimes, you could’ve already had that thing that you wanted. And, even if you couldn’t have, then how can you start taking the actions today, right now, that will help get you closer to it?

If you are emotionally invested in being a salsa dancer, but you’re not going to salsa dancing classes or, at the very least, practicing alone in your room with youtube videos, do you really want to be a salsa dancer?

Something the discussion completely ignores is how worthy something is of desire. For my part, I think a romantic relationship is intrinsically more valuable than an island home, but not everyone would agree. So, really, that graph of action against desire should also include some measurement for how valuable something is, but, I’m not yet very good at 3 dimensional graphs, yet–trust me, I tried.

Another thing I ignored is when something is what to do when something seems impossible for you but not for someone else. Well, a starting point is to dig into whether or not it actually is impossible for you. Spoiler, it’s probably not.

The next time you find yourself envying something or someone, run through the envy test like a checklist. 

The answer to whether or not you truly believe the desire is worthy of effort is in your response to those questions. 

Live Deeply,