#187: Drowning in envy

Good morning!

I’m trying something different for this round of Dear Baby. Instead of answering three reader questions at once, I’m going to be answering one reader question, three weeks in a row, using each as an opportunity to write an essay that touches on something I’ve been wanting to write about anyway. Thank god for your perfect questions. This week, I’m exploring what to do with all our envy.

On envy

“Haley, I’m struggling so much with envy that I can barely find space in my mind for other things. I look around and wonder how people DO things: make cool fun friends in a new city where they literally don’t know anyone, hustle to make shit happen, decorate hip apartments, and generally have the ambition, resilience, and luck to realize their dreams. I read interviews where it all seems so simple. Are people just skimming over the painful, human nitty gritty parts of how things actually come together? Am I anxious beyond repair? To be fair, I am in a particularly low moment—serious health diagnosis and long-term partnership ended around the same time—and I know that makes it hard to see things realistically, but I think I’ve always held these self-limiting beliefs. I want more for myself, especially now that I recognize how fragile life can be. 

I find myself particularly charged by one couple I met through my ex a few years back: beautiful, intelligent, athletic, charismatic, and bold. On more than one occasion my ego was wounded by them being objectively better at certain things I tried to do for fun. They have forged life adventures together and have the shiny photos to match. I went on such a deep-dive looking at everything they’ve ever posted on the internet and, naturally, it only confirmed that they were even more accomplished and shinier than I originally knew about. Shame spiral ensued. I know envy is a sin and comparison is the thief of joy, but how do I realistically get my brain space back? I try to pinpoint that yes, they have done things I want to do but really don’t feel I’m capable of right now. Would love your advice on how to find peace of mind in this moment. Things feel hard enough already. Thank you!”

I know this place. I’m sure everyone does! When you’re feeling low and staying there, other people’s successes are an important part of that holding pattern. We use them to construct an argument that proves our own inadequacy, gathering our anecdotal materials from peers, movies, social media, interviews. In the end, we create a monstrous composite of a worthy person. Say, one who follows their dreams (but maintains stability), makes friends wherever they go (but keeps all the old), goes out a lot (but has hobbies, is healthy), has a hip closet and apartment (but isn’t caught up in appearances), is relatable, diligent (but unique, flexible), is a visionary (but down to earth), and is ambitious (but content with their life). This person does not exist, but they do in our imagination, and they seem real enough, so why not see how we measure up? This is one of the quickest ways to hate yourself.

There are a few important things to remember when comparing yourself to other people. The first is that a lot of celebrated qualities are incompatible with each other. Ambition often comes with discontent; focus with rigidity; contentment with complacency. A couple that does everything together probably has fewer close friends. A social butterfly might have a messy house. These are crude examples, but it’s worth remembering that we all have to assess our strengths, try to build lives around those, and accept the consequences of those choices. The second thing to remember is a classic that bears repeating: Things are never as rosy as they seem. Every life is laden with its own unique struggles. A life without struggle is meaningless, and people without material problems suffer more convoluted emotional ones. The goal is not a clean life free of friction. (That is death.)

The third is related to the second, but distinct in an important way. It’s the idea that not only are other people’s lives less rosy than they seem, but we actually have no way of truly knowing other people’s lives. Postmodern philosophers have spent decades trying to explain this, but I have found no more succinct explanation than this tweet: “Some ppl really ruin their lives trying to experience third person feelings in the first person.” Feelings observed are distinct from feelings felt. When we watch two people snuggle into bed in an advertisement for sheets, it looks wonderful, but snuggling in bed ourselves feels wonderful in a completely different way. This gap between our observations and our experiences is unclosable. There is, on the one hand, our idea of things, and on the other, the reality of them.

Consider watching through a window as a family enjoys a home-cooked meal. You might imagine how it feels to be part of this group—their warmth and happiness, their sense of belonging as they pass dishes back and forth. Now imagine being part of this family. Maybe you do feel warmth and happiness, but those feelings are much more complex, less tidy. What came before the dinner? What comes after? Are you actually present, or thinking about something else? Your family is not a snapshot or a concept; it’s messy, in flux, evolving. It has depth and continuity. No matter how lovely the dinner is in reality, it can never really live up to what the observer imagines. Because what they imagine is actually just a symbol—an idea they’ve adapted from TV, movies, and marketing their entire lives about what it means to be part of a happy family. Again, I’m not saying families can’t be happy. They just can’t be happy in the way A Happy Family is happy.

Our perception is steeped in these symbols. I even used them in this answer: the dream-follower, the social butterfly. These are just concepts. They refer to experiences or people that don’t actually exist in reality, but are only referred to, in the abstract. Sometimes you’ll see people comment under photos: “This looks like an ad!” That is, a photo that’s pretending to be real life. And they mean this as a compliment. By pledging our allegiance to symbols, by allowing them to shape our ambitions, we set our sights on embodying something that does not exist. We are play-acting. Hoping to be “the type of person” who does x, y, z, rather than simply pursuing those things of a more organic, intimate, and personal volition.

This kind of cosplay matters because the further we wander away from reality, into a world of signs and symbols, or hyperreality, as Baudrillard referred to it, the more alienated we’ll feel. This is because, as we’ve established, reality cannot live up to our ideals—of following our dreams, or moving abroad, or falling in love, or whatever bracketed fantasy we’ve built up in our minds. But this doesn’t deter us. Instead of abandoning these ideals in search of the real, we just try harder to close the gap between them. We force reality’s hand. We take photos, set them to music, retell our stories in simpler terms to other people and ourselves. Instead of seeking true satisfaction in life, we seek it in performing ourselves for the abstract or literal other, hoping to find brief comfort, even euphoria, in spinning the perfect narrative, finding the perfect label, however incomplete. Ironically, we do this to feel more real, more connected, but in the process achieve the opposite.

In his book The Culture of Narcissism, social critic Christopher Lasch, as quoted by Lauren Fadiman, “argues that the phenomenon of people living their lives as self-conscious performances ‘derives… from [a] waning belief in the reality of the external world’... According to him, we are trapped in a hall of mirrors, endlessly seeking ‘reassurance of our capacity to captivate or impress others, anxiously searching out blemishes that might detract from the appearance we intend to project.” This is no explicit fault of ours. As Dr. Douglas Kellner and Dr. Steve Gennaro put it in their piece about postmodern social media, “Baudrillard argued it was increasingly difficult to separate representation from reality because we live in a culture of consumerism where the electronic mass media maintains the ‘illusion of an actuality’ to keep us shopping and entertained.”

Admittedly, I’ve digressed. But I think all this is relevant to your question. You asked, “how people DO things: make cool fun friends in a new city where they literally don’t know anyone, hustle to make shit happen, decorate hip apartments, and generally have the ambition, resilience, and luck to realize their dreams?” Notice how everything is plural—these are types of people. You are comparing yourself to an amalgam. This is your monstrous composite of a worthy life. But reality is so much more interesting than that. It’s a soupy mess of stunning, undocumentable detail, unfurling continuously and thrusting us constantly into the treacherous unknown, forcing us to reckon, over and over, with who we were or what we once thought. There will be highs, there will be lows, and the tidy narratives that emerge—like that we hustled, or were hip, or realized our dreams—are just the ones we tell ourselves. Even this description is a narrative; life will be infinitely more textured.

This couple whose photos you’ve been looking at? The couple that is “forging life adventures together with the shiny photos to match”? They’re your Happy Family in the window. I don’t mean they’re secretly miserable—they might be very happy together, while of course dealing with whatever complex struggles their humanity demands. But your idea of them is an illusion they could never possibly live up to. You’re not anxious beyond repair; you’re like all of us, responding rationally to the simulation of postmodern life. But to whatever extent you can, try to resist it. Try to claw your way back to reality and assess the pieces of your life that are calling out for your care and attention: your health, your grief, the struggles that give your life meaning. Try to hear them and respond authentically. You’re going to need care, friends, rest, art, food, healing. You’re going to need to set aside the stock image of your inherited ambitions and ground your goals in reality—in genuine, material needs, in human connection, and in the momentum that mercifully gathers at the bottom of our low points.

Special thanks to the writer of this question. If you have a perspective to share with them, please add it below! Next week, I’ll be sharing an alarmingly long list of advice (mostly emotional) for new mothers (and new friends of mothers), as requested from a very sweet sister of a pregnant woman. I’ll see you back for that next Sunday.

I hope you have a nice day!
Haley

Cover image via Getty | Sophie Bassouls