(Disclaimer: this picture has nothing to do with this week's blog, it just sort of describes the mood. Plus my dog is adorable and everyone should know)
5:15pm. On a bus somewhere along
the eastern seaboard.
I guess it doesn’t really matter
where you go, or what you’re doing, life will always take you on adventures if
you’re willing. As you may have noticed by this week’s location, I’m off on a
new journey headed down south to Georgia for a huge, week-long, ultimate Frisbee
tournament near the beach. Gotta love spring break. (More about this next week)
Since my last blog, I’ve been
wondering what I should write about next, but nothing really pertinent came to
mind until Wednesday night. It was a balmy 70 degrees in Poughkeepsie this past
Wednesday, which of course meant breaking out the tank tops and Frisbees and
spending the whole day out on the campus green enjoying the sun. Later on that
night, I joined a good friend of mine for some Ben & Jerry’s out on the
lawn and we had a good talk. I remembered writing about this same friend way
back in Italy. Her name is Kendra and she has just returned from a semester
abroad in Senegal, Africa. Since our homecoming she has been a constant
confidant. Often, my best friend, Lacey (who went to Italy with me), Kendra and
I will sit and watch the sunset together, we’ll talk about school, friends,
family… whatever. But there’s something really special about these chats. Lately
I’ve been doing a lot of self-reflection, but it’s interesting to see how
coming back from abroad has affected my friends who also went away last
semester. Lacey seems to have hit the ground running, she’s just so completely
in her element with all the new lessons she’s learned, I have to admit
(reluctantly) I’m a bit envious. I see it in Kendra also, she’s already
naturally outgoing and as she puts it, she “doesn’t do awkward.” Talk about
envy.
In the end though, it’s just
another opportunity to reflect. I ask myself, is it healthy to be envious of
your friends (or anyone really)? Can’t you just be happy for them? Honestly, it’s not like they
don’t have problems too. I think the answer is yes. Yes, you can be happy for
your friends, in fact, what I’m learning is that you need to be happy for your
friends because otherwise you seriously diminish your own chances for
happiness. Envy is a thing that consumes the best of us at times, and while
I’ve never had any good luck ignoring my feelings completely, they all have
their space and place. Envy’s a tricky one though because it’s a feeling that
doesn’t serve you or anyone around you. You just waste your energy feeling
jealous that you’re not one way when you could be spending it getting closer to
being the way you actually want to be. Even if you channel your jealousy into
motivation to achieve new things, it seems a tainted motivation. Like you can’t
motivate yourself so you rely on the success of others for your own motivation.
It all just seems so fruitless when it comes to envy.
So what’s the lesson here? It
goes back to what I wrote about Kendra way back in Italy. Kendra’s mom wrote to
her in Africa, “It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new.” These were words of wisdom for me in Italy and
they are words of wisdom for me still. As I ride these long hours down the
eastern coast, they echo like an old sweet song. This isn’t something you deal
with when you go abroad (or have any life changing experience for that matter)
it’s the way your life is forever affected. Envy masquerades as a place of
security and familiarity, but it’s not, it’s just a place of fear and
stagnation. The lesson this week (and, let’s be real, many weeks in the future
probably) is to be honest enough with yourself to acknowledge that place of
envy, but take up the courage that is most certainly within you and step beyond
those fearful, stagnant places to the new and unfamiliar road ahead. I can’t
say I know what that road will hold, or even just that it will be better, it
may not be. All I know is this: better to move on, take new chances and maybe
gain the whole world, than to stay so very still, certainly gaining nothing.
Envy is the toxic fumes of unpotentiated desire. For me this has been the greatest alchemy, being willing to admit that what I am envious of is what I want in my life, and often have not been willing to admit and go for. Sometimes it's as simple as I want what he/she has, often it's deeper; I want what that represents for me. The attention, the approval, the achievement; sometimes what I envy I want because of what it would mean of me if I have it: "I am _____, can't you tell? Look, you can see it because I have ____."
ReplyDeleteIn all cases it's the old adage, where there is smoke there is fire...