Changing My Inner Hue

The sky is darkening. Clouds are rolling in. I’m idly watching the trees sway, wilder and wilder, while making a mental inventory of all the things I should have done today and did not. It is a disappointingly lengthy list, and one neglected item in particular promises to haunt me for weeks to come. I won’t mention it here. Indeed, I will blot it out of mind and try not to think about it at all. I am really good at that.

This has not been an altogether unproductive week, though. Tuesday night I finished Joseph Epstein’s novel Envy, which is one part of a series examining the seven deadly sins and one of the many philosophical books I have gathered on a wide variety of topics. I have its sister novels Greed and Wrath, but I likely won’t get around to reading those. Their respective topics do not interest me much. I am not a greedy person nor have I ever been given to intense bouts of anger. Envy, it pains me to admit, I can relate to very well.

Epstein begins his investigative journey through the jade forest with a few acknowledgments I found particularly insightful:

“Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all. Sloth may not seem much fun, nor anger either, but giving way to deep laziness has its pleasures and the expression of anger entails a release that is not without its small delights. In recompense, envy may be the subtlest—perhaps I should say the most insidious—of the seven deadly sins. Surely it is the one that people are least likely to want to own up to, for to do so is to admit that one is probably ungenerous, mean, small-hearted.”

And so, as I read this and quietly admitted to myself that I regularly tussle with the emotion, I started questioning whether those characteristics fit me at all. Am I ungenerous, mean, and small-hearted? My initial response was an unflagging “no.” But after a few minutes of letting the question permeate I realized the more accurate answer would be “not usually.” I’m not usually small-hearted or mean, but damn if I don’t have my moments where those traits flare up like wildfires. That I am a master at hiding them is only a small consolation. They color my thoughts, if not my actions.

At any rate, you could say I pride myself on being aware of my failings. That I was already taking a renewed stock of my personality within the first chapter of Envy didn’t dispirit me too much. It is impossible to know everything about the world (or perhaps even another individual), but it has been my personal maxim that a person should strive to be as aware of one’s self as possible. That includes the good, the bad, the pretty, the very ugly and the absolutely horrendous.

But owning up to this particular “sin” isn’t something easily done, is it? I would rather be publicly defamed as slothful instead of envious (putting aside the very real possibility that I am guilty of harboring both shortcomings). After all, envy is something of a Rorschach test. What one covets of others says a lot about their character and disposition towards life, and ups the wattage in a part of one’s personality usually kept dim.

Now, if I were Christian I might adopt the mindset that, as a sin, envy is something I should strive to deracinate. St. Paul wrote, “Love does not envy.” And the bible does task us to love thy neighbor, etc etc. But according to Peter Walcott’s Envy and the Greeks, briefly quoted throughout Epstein’s own Envy, the people of ancient Athens saw the emotion as a fact of life; it was an intrinsic part of their view of human nature, a perennial weed that cropped up in relationships “among siblings, among peers, [and] between the common and the prominent citizens.” Instead of trying to suppress it they sought methods to vent it constructively and, in Walcott’s words, “make it slightly less noxious.”

I think I fall much more in line with the ancient Greek’s line of thinking, and I have set out to make this untoward (if nearly invisible) character trait less noxious, less insidious, and less damning. Because Epstein is right; it’s patently no fun being green with envy. After putting down his book I spent a few moments going through all of the things I’ve found myself wishing I possessed that belong to the various people I know, and the introspection left me with an acute awareness of just how much I feel I lack. It was sobering, slightly depressing, and threatened to paralyze me with discouragement. It surely would have a year ago. That it does not now… well, perhaps that is a positive sign I’m of stronger character?

Baby steps?