On Envy

Envy tends to take me by surprise.

Mercifully, it’s not an address I spend an awful lot of time at. Significant stretches can pass and it simply doesn’t come up. There’s a lot in my life to be grateful for, a fairly coherent narrative to cleave to. That in itself creates regular encounters with meaning, which then in turn regulates what the Sufis call the Nafs, or ‘the greedy soul’. Life is absorbing and in that absorption I break free of the illusion of scarcity. When I feel scarcity it’s usually coming from a wound or some maleficent trance I’ve fallen under.

Envy’s a horrible motel to stay at. The pizza is cold, the air sour, there’s a party going on down the hall and you most definitely do not have an invitation. No one wanders down your end of the corridor. It’s a masterclass in smallness, and distinctly uncreative. When it does come upon me I feel stiffed by the world, stiffed by God, and under the restrictions of some pre-ordained cosmological limit. And this will always be instigated by staring too long into a neighbour’s field. So-and-so garners more respect in the world, so-and-so seems award-adorned, so-and-so can’t move for the sheer, rather irritating, level of opportunity in their life.

I become a Grendel, listening at the door of the feasting hall and knowing the cheers and toasts are not for me. The mermaids will not be singing for me. The world becomes sepia tinged, and I head off into hurt, mostly self-inflicted isolation. I brood, and at my worst, I slag, whoever happens to be in my sights that day. Whoever the garlanded one is allotted to be this time.

This is a profoundly un-Christian state, and pure devilment. It is to be nipped in the bud and to be indulged as briefly as is at all possible. When I’m in this place I have no largesse in me, no charity, and I feel very far from everybody.