ENVY, you are a truly mangy cur.
Forbidden by the Ten Commandments,
you nevertheless curl around our necks like a moth-eaten stole,
un-shrug-off-able. Why, Shakespeare himself undoubtedly suffered from your love
bites, or he could not have created Othello’s envious character Iago with such
acumen. The Bard’s contemporaries, too, must have been punctured mercilessly by
your small, sharp fangs.
Frankly, you are the most
embarrassing of the Seven Deadly Sins – petty and demeaning. You are also the
most misunderstood of the Ten Commandments.
If I were Moses, I would have called
you by your proper name right from the get-go. I wouldn’t have couched my
references to you in the term “covet,” which has a kind of comforting, velvety
quality, like “coverlet.” I wouldn’t have said “You shall not covet your
neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female
slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.” I’d have put
it to people straight. I’d have said, “Don’t envy,” and right away, folks
would’ve gotten the idea.
But obviously, Envy, you were
already firmly entrenched before Moses came on the scene, and he, for some
reason, was pussyfooting around. The anti-coveting tract was the 10th
commandment. Does that mean it was an afterthought? I can see where “the 9
Commandments” might not have had much of a ring to it.
Whatever the problem, the advice to
steer clear of you has not worked. Making false idols is on the wane, and
killing is generally avoided, but you, Envy, endure. Over centuries, popular
culture has promoted envy like raindrops promote rivers. Without you, there’d
be no upward mobility. Envy, have you seen House and Home? Playboy? GQ? Ox
Monthly? Donkeys Today? Coveting is what life has always been about.
So commonplace are you that there
are two current films called Envy – one straight-to-video number about “life in
a Detroit drug ring” starring singer Ray J, and another by Turkish
writer-director Zeki Demirkubuz, about two sisters-in-law, one pretty and one
plain. In 2004, Barry Levinson made a film called Envy, as well, starring Ben
Stiller as a man who is eaten up by his best friend’s (Jack Black’s) success.
Ben Stiller envious of Jack Black -- now that’s comedy.
Envy of our friends and relations
tends to run deeper than it does of strangers, but outsiders are by no means
immune to our ill will. Zoe Williams, a writer for guardian.co.uk, summed up
this brand of invidiousness in an article this past week dubbed Lotto
Euromillions: Soothing the sore of envy when others strike it lucky.
In it, she noted that when we’re
faced with the news that somebody else has had a massive lottery win, we
immediately start trying to peg whether or not that person is worthy. In the U.K.,
for example, the poor reputation of “Lotto Lout” Michael Carroll (who won 9.7
million pounds in 2002 but wound up in jail) was pitted against that of an
“unmaterialistic” and diligent newspaper editor called Pat Griffiths, who won
8.4 million pounds in 2004. Unlike Carroll, a substance abuser and wearer of
vulgar jewelry, Griffiths earned public approbation because she was frugal and
un-showy. Even among winners, we like to find a loser.
In Canada, snap judgments were made
concerning Alberta’s Seguro Ndabene, who already had four lotto wins amounting
to $2 million in five years when he hit the jackpot for $17 million in
2009. The Western Canada Lottery
Corporation automatically investigated, as it says it does any lotto wins over
$10,000, including those by multiple winners.
Then the brother-in-law of a lottery
kiosk owner Ndabene regularly patronized complained, saying the winning ticket
was part of Ndabene’s regular group purchases, in which the brother-in-law
participated, and which the kiosk owner organized.
Nastily, one commenter on CBC News’
October 26th online story contributed a theory about how Ndabene was
cheating, adding, “This is much better then (sic) the Nigerian letter Scam.”
(Ndabene is from Mozambique.)
Ndabene finally got his money in
November and then announced he was going to sue the Lottery Corporation for
withholding his winnings, sans
interest. Another commenter on CBC News chided him for that, writing “…you are
just as bad as the guy who tried to take it from you. If there is one thing I
can’t stand it’s sore winners.”
In the court of public opinion, the
more you win, the more you lose.
I suspect there are only two kinds
of people who never feel the tug of envy -- the truly virtuous and the
intolerably smug. How I wish I were one or the other. The good thing about
being genuinely virtuous is that you never have to feel bad about yourself. The
good thing about being smug is that you’re always too busy patting yourself on
the back to squeeze in feeling bad about yourself.
The rest of us waste too much time
comparing what we are, or what we have, to the achievements and possessions of
our peers. As the Guardian’s Williams points out, we are especially enraged
when we believe they didn’t even do anything special to “deserve” their riches.
I’m not much of a one for envying
other people’s cars or clothes, the restaurants they go to or the jewels they
flash about. I don’t think anybody else’s husband is superior to mine or
anybody else’s children are brighter. I’m far more likely to covet others’
initiative, persistence, foresight or fearlessness. I’d like to be as unselfish
as one of my friends, as curious as another, as “in the moment” as a third.
Rather than wishing I had their stuff, I covet their attitudes.
Still, I have to admit that I
wouldn’t mind a slightly bigger house, one with a tad more natural light. As a result, these dang lottery winners sure do get on my nerves. The tickets I
buy never win, even though I’m just as ordinary and unmeritorious as they.
So, Envy, if I swear to forego you
in the future, could I have my reward now? “Covet,” shmove-it. As far as I’m
concerned, the rules concerning you have always been unconscionably murky.
Surely you agree: Moses owes us.
