I smiled weakly at the Major as he went prancing by, but I didn\u2019t pull back. I wanted to see him again. There was something rather admirable about the way he was galloping round and round the deck with no clothes on at all, something wonderfully innocent and unembarrassed and cheerful and friendly. And here was I, a bundle of youthful self-consciousness, gaping at him through the porthole and disapproving quite strongly of what he was doing. But I was also envying him. I was actually jealous of his total don\u2019t-give-a-damn attitude, and I wished like mad that I myself had the guts to go out there and do the same thing. I wanted to be like him. I longed to be able to fling off my pajamas and go scampering around the deck in the altogether and to hell with anyone who happened to see me. But not in a million years could I have done it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The site of a naked man sauntering around a ship initially provoked Dahl to shudder with disapproval. But when he dug down into his feelings, he realized that his critical judgement really masked feelings of envy.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the insidious thing about the specter of the green-eyed monster: it often wears various disguises that make it hard to recognize it for what it is. We think our thoughts and behaviors are motivated by one thing, when it\u2019s really envy that\u2019s got the reins.<\/p>\n
Today we\u2019ll talk about a few of the guises envy takes. Learning to identify them contributes to healthy self-awareness and can prevent us from doing and saying things that may ultimately be detrimental to our relationships, progress, and happiness.<\/p>\n
3 Disguises of Envy<\/u><\/h2>\n\u201cRepent!\u201d<\/h2>\n
I knew a couple of guys in college who were best friends and fairly devout in their faith. One was more attractive and got more dates than the other fellow, who had never even kissed a girl.<\/p>\n
The former landed a steady girlfriend who he spent a fair amount of time making out with. Nothing at all scandalous, by most people\u2019s standards.<\/p>\n
But his friend saw fit to call him to repentance. Said he was disappointed, and that he thought the smoocher wasn\u2019t living uprightly and ought to court his lady more purely.<\/p>\n
A year later, the chastiser finally got himself a girlfriend. They started making out on the second date, and on every date thereafter. His untested principles, which he had felt so sure of in the abstract, rapidly changed once his position changed \u2014 once he had the opportunity to experience a situation firsthand that he had previously only deliberated on hypothetically.<\/p>\n
He later realized that the self-righteousness he had felt about his friend\u2019s behavior had really been a manifestation of his envy, rather than his conviction. He wished he had a girlfriend himself, but by engaging in a holy crusade, rather than confronting that fact, he was able to not only avoid feeling inferior to his friend, but could in fact feel superior to him.<\/p>\n
Of course, this certainly doesn\u2019t mean that every religious or moral principle a man upholds is really underlain by envy. Nor does it mean that if you do feel envy of someone breaking a value you\u2019re committed to, it isn\u2019t a right principle, and you should feel free to break it as well; you could feel a pang of envy that a friend gets to play the field after dumping his wife, for example, but that doesn\u2019t mean you should follow suit.<\/p>\n
It is simply wise to examine your feelings of personal righteousness to be sure that your standards haven\u2019t been adopted and\/or stretched beyond the mark for reasons you think are born of piety, but are in fact fueled by envy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate that guy.\u201d<\/h2>\n
Is there someone that bothers the crap out of you? Maybe it\u2019s a public figure, a writer, musician, or pundit. Maybe it\u2019s just a former colleague or friend, a business rival, or an acquaintance you critically watch from afar.<\/p>\n
Maybe you kind of hate them because they\u2019re out and out a contemptible person, who says dumb things and has objectively done you and others wrong.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s also worth looking under the hood of those acrimonious feelings. Sometimes, even when the person is a d-bag in a hundred different ways, in a least one way, you envy them. They\u2019ve got something you want. They took an idea you kept in your head, and acted on it first. They\u2019re doing something better than you are. It\u2019s this envy that, if it hasn\u2019t caused your dislike for them, has significantly deepened it.<\/p>\n
This envy disguise particularly crops up when it comes to business competitors.<\/p>\n
Maybe there\u2019s some guy who\u2019s operating in the same space as you. Maybe there\u2019s some area where he\u2019s beating you. Rather than acknowledging that fact, though, you just focus on all the things you don\u2019t like about your rival, all the ways your contempt for him is justified. Any anxiety you might be feeling over his maneuvers in the market are subsumed when you say, \u201cI hate that guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the relief offered by contempt may be sweet, temporarily, failing to diagnose the real cause of your resentment deprives you of the opportunity of candidly assessing a weakness, and working to get stronger in the long-term.<\/p>\n
If someone\u2019s got something you want, rather than ignoring this desire by blanketing it in all the things he does wrong, home in on it, and figure out how to achieve it yourself.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want it anyway.\u201d<\/h2>\n
When there\u2019s a gap between how you\u2019d like to see your life and how it really is, between your ideals and your behavior, between what you want and what you have, you experience cognitive dissonance.<\/p>\n
This dissonance can be alleviated in one of two ways.<\/p>\n
You can move your behavior to be closer in line with your goals. You can work to close the gap between how you\u2019d like your life to be, and how it is.<\/p>\n
Or, you can eliminate the distance between your ideal and your reality, by eliminating the ideal. You can decide that some goal you used to desire is stupid, pointless, not worth the time after all. This is the classic dynamic of sour grapes: \u201cI can\u2019t get this thing? I don\u2019t want it anyway<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\nThe trouble with option #2, is that it\u2019s very difficult to get rid of a deep desire. To keep it at bay, you\u2019ve got to constantly assail it and tear it down. Taking a nuanced view of the merits of the goal is out of the question; you must view it as wholly bad and entirely stupid to pursue.<\/p>\n
You\u2019d really like to find a girl to settle down with. But those you\u2019ve approached so far haven\u2019t reciprocated your advances. So, you decide that all women are untrustworthy, and that marriage is a stupid, outdated institution that only a fool would commit to.<\/p>\n
You\u2019d like to be a part of a college fraternity. But they all turn you down (or, you imagine that they would, and so don’t even try to pledge at all). So, you decide that those who belong to fraternities are all a bunch of dumb, alcohol-guzzling, coed-raping bros.<\/p>\n
You weren\u2019t born with a particularly masculine physique or disposition (like, say, our 26th president<\/a>), but there\u2019s a part of you that\u2019d like to feel strong, confident, virile. Since it doesn\u2019t seem possible, however, you decide that \u201cmanhood\u201d is a culturally-relative concept that doesn\u2019t really exist and that thinking about manliness is only for insecure, backwards-looking misogynists who need to redefine old concepts of masculinity for the new age.<\/p>\nNow, is it possible to come to the kinds of conclusions reached by these hypothetical gentlemen through honest examination, analysis, and conviction? Of course.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s just that sometimes, yes, sometimes such beliefs have in fact been fueled by envy \u2014 by sour grapes. All the vigorous efforts one engages in to tear something down have really been born from the feeling of being barred entry.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the amount of rancor that must be engaged in to keep this acknowledgement from reaching one\u2019s consciousness tends to canker the soul, and create a hobby horse that makes a man one-sided in his interests and personality. The denial of a desire that has only been submerged and hasn\u2019t really gone away, tends towards creating an unhappiness that is hard to shake, because its real root is difficult to trace.<\/p>\n
Better it would be, if a goal is seemingly blocked, to try a different strategy in attaining it, to pursue an alternative outlet to the same end \u2014 to move as close as you can to a desire within one\u2019s limitations, working to make the most of what you got.<\/p>\n
Lifting the Mask of Envy<\/span><\/h2>\nWe often think we will know when we are feeling envious; that it is as easily recognized an emotion as sadness or joy. But in fact, the green-eyed monster often sneaks into our lives in a variety of subtle disguises \u2014 masks that make us believe that rather than someone else having something we want, we<\/em> are the superior ones.<\/p>\nEnvy need not be a wholly bad thing; it can act more like a symptom that points to some underlying weakness or unacknowledged desire we ought to address. But in order for envy to motivate us in a positive direction, we must recognize it when it arises, no matter what form it takes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When the author Roald Dahl was twenty-two, he boarded a ship leaving England to start his first job working for the Shell Company in East Africa. On the fourth day of the voyage, he woke up early and relaxed in the top bunk of his cabin. Looking through a porthole positioned near his pillow, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65587,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[502,6,42269],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-65438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-character","category-featured","category-self-improvement"],"featured_image_urls":{"reactor-320":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2017\/08\/burglar-1-320x167.jpg","aesop-tiny-cover":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2017\/08\/burglar-1-400x208.jpg","aesop-character":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2017\/08\/burglar-1-200x200.jpg","aesop-collection":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2017\/08\/burglar-1-300x280.jpg","aesop-grid-image":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2017\/08\/burglar-1-400x208.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65438"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":180003,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65438\/revisions\/180003"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65438"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=65438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a><\/center>When the author Roald Dahl was twenty-two, he boarded a ship leaving England to start his first job working for the Shell Company in East Africa.<\/p>\n