Not everything in our life here at the Court actually revolves around ourselves (or is particularly funny, as much as I would like it to be so), and it seems that lately the waves of envy have been crashing over not only myself but a few others both that I read online and off.
This pernicious envy which comes in the form of wanting a job while others have great ones or wanting to spend more time with the kids or wanting, humorously enough, to spend less time with the kids-- and the "I'll be damned" part of it is that no matter what you want, there's someone pretty near you who's got what you want while secretly wanting your life. I guess the trick is, from the mouth of wise King Solomon himself, "[to enjoy] life, because nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad." -- Ecclesiastes 8:15
This got me thinking-- what have I been wishing that I could be along the way? I submit, for no particular reason beyond that it cracked me up all the numbnuts things I have wasted my time wishing I could be, an abridged catalog:
late 1980s-- wished I could be Mario from the Mario Bros. and be able to fly, spit fire, and crawl through pipes. This led to an ill-fated attempt to crawl through a snow tunnel, whose collapse has left me claustrophobic to this day.
early 1990s-- wished girls would think I was really cool. I actually thought they did until one day in fourth grade I got up the nerve to say hi to one after which she ran away... let's just say I played hockey at recess for the rest of the year and didn't try that again for awhile.
mid-1990s -- wished I could be Pele and play soccer better than anyone I knew. At this point I realized I may have been aiming too high and reverted to playing soccer as well as anyone I knew so that ... girls would think I was cool. Worked about as well as the first time.
late 1990s -- wished my hair was blond. This led to, in order, hair colors of blond, light brown, black, and back to white-blond again, when I showed up to our Senior High Baccalaureate with white-blond cornrow dreadlocks. My father still gets all-time points for being cool when another parent asked him, "Have you seen Micah's hair?" and the response was, possibly a little hopefully, "No, he didn't shave it all off, did he?" Seriously, I hope those pictures never hit the internet....
I'll finish this post later. Feel free to add your own stories or questions about me or our family as (hopefully) I get better at invading the blogosphere...
I need to get with King Solomon's program, heh. It's absolutely true that "no matter what you want, there's someone pretty near you who's got what you want while secretly wanting your life" and I've seen it in action. Friends who I secretly envied have at various points in time told me that they envied ME. Whenever that has happened, I've always said "WHAT?!?!?!" and then we have a good laugh about how the grass is always greener.
ReplyDeleteMaybe sometimes the tiniest bit of envy is good if it gets a person off their butt and helps them work toward something they want, but most of the time I think it just leads down a pretty sad path.
I'm in complete agreement about where it leads -- don't know if you have a Bible, but the book that's from is Ecclesiastes and for a guy (Solomon) who seemed to have everything (I mean, my heavens, 700 wives? -- a freaking palace!) he was a bit melancholy about all his stuff. Envy doesn't get you that much, which doesn't stop me from doing it ALL the time, so I figured I'd just chronicle my own crap just to see how much energy I've wasted. To be honest, I wish I could write like you, but the fact is I won't ever write the way you do, so being myself will have to do...plus, I can't sit still for more than fifteen minutes at a time, so these rapid-fire posts will have to do :)
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