Envy
Envy as it turns out, is the source of all humiliation. I read that somewhere — well, not really — I made it up and claimed that I read it, but when it is said with authority, the statement sounds entirely credible. I don’t believe the degree of envy necessarily matters, and certainly, case-by-case the source will not be equal, or for that matter, honestly acknowledged. Total immersion is the only way to truly understand the scope of an incident, and I should note that I have always gravitated toward forms of humiliation that are all-encompassing, soul crushing, and life altering.
In fact the particular species of humiliation I speak of, survives by picking through the sludge in the deep recesses of one’s mind; it is capable of raking through carefully indexed events and their corresponding emotions to find a steady supply of previously unconsidered associations, then promoting them one-by-one into searing focus…and envy will be firmly located in the footnotes for each these incidents.
I could recount a long list of humiliating events here, but that would be, in a word, humiliating. No. I have discovered that there is a degree of power in quiet, and as such, I would rather discuss the source; I’d prefer to talk about the influence of envy.
Each one of us has some object of envy that plagues our thoughts, and those who say they haven’t, are flat out liars. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good thing to keep in check; envy should be minimized, but surely a bit of muckraking can reveal at least one coveted object or a moment of jealousy in each person’s life. My guess — and it’s just a guess — is that in any consumer society, one doesn’t need to dig all the way down to the muck; envy will be visibly lurking just below the surface. For some, the focus of their envy may be material, others might envy personality, confidence or appearance, and then there are those who would say their envies are situational. For most of us however, I believe there is an irrational mix held together with only the thinnest of common threads.
I suppose that I am obliged at this point to actually tell you something about my own cache of envy, or be forced to rethink the entire premise and turn this into an academic journal article with the summarized results from a large sample of anonymized, pseudo-social-science, interviews, or…yawn…whatever. So I’ll pick something meaningful, something that is at the core of my very being, something that has defined my life in more ways than I care to admit — blindness.
Perhaps blindness is an overstatement; let me explain. I’m not actually blind; I have low vision — a little more than half way to legally blind, or if you prefer, a little less than half way normal. My retinal deficiencies are compounded by a lack of stereo vision and muscular control, and my eyes move independently and erratically in ways that prevent focus. And while for some of my adult life, the condition of my vision remained stable, its recent declines seem to be trying to make up for lost time.
So, as the potential for blindness progresses, I envy those who see well, but also those that have adapted to lives without sight. And while yes, freakishly acute vision is an object of desire, it is the members of the latter group that are often promoted in my mind for their humble accomplishments — for the simple things they have become proficient at, and for the trials they rarely speak of.
There are challenges the blind issue only to themselves; challenges that must be met to maintain connections to things that others take for granted — to feelings of adequacy and equality, and perhaps especially, a fundamental sense of normalcy that allows each of us to belong, and for brief moments, to be free of resentment. I know that these challenges can be truly crushing when they fail, as I experience my own precursor versions on a regular basis. On the other hand, I imagine their successes to be quietly exhilarating. I envy both sides of the coin — the performance and the effort.
It may seem odd for me speak of others in a way that keeps them at arms length —indeed to label them as other — but in this case, the blind and I are still embodied differently. Their lives are not yet within my realm of my experience, and so I continue to envy their adaptation and recognize my desire to find shortcuts to their level of competence and acceptance. Envy is the easy part, but it goes hand in hand with fixation on small things — on anticipation and expectations of loss, and on frustration at the prevalence of my bad habits — the bad habits of someone who can still see.
So despite the resentment of not properly belonging to either of these groups, sighted or blind, I remind myself that the influence of envy is powerful, and that it is perhaps best kept quiet.
