Let Jealousy Be Your Guide...

Jealously introduced me to my best friend.

It was college...we were both in the theatre department at our University, and when she arrived on campus (a dewey freshman when I was already a wizened sophomore) I was convinced that she would be the end of me and my University acting career.  She, people, she glowed. Onstage and off. And, try as I might, I couldn't seem to find anything wrong with her that would make me feel better in the face of her awesomeness.  She was, unfailingly, lovely.

(Sigh.)

And, in a rare moment of youthful wisdom, I quickly realized that my problem was not that I disliked this lovely girl...my problem was that I adored her.  (And, yes, wanted to be as leggy and sparkly as she was).  Fast-forward 12 years....she is still my closest friend (and as leggy and sparkly as ever).

Whyyyyyyyyyy am I bringing this up, you ask?  Well, this week has been a week, for me, of hot cranky red-faced envy.  And so I have been trying to remind myself of this story, and of the soft-heartedness that resides behind jealousy and competition and comparison and all that...gunk.

I won't go into the details, the list of things that people around me got that I want.  (Oh, and "people around me" also includes, you know, people in movies. And Emily Blunt, who is taught yoga by someone I know and who is apparently just as graceful and lovely as a person as she seems on the screen, which sort of made me want to die, when I heard it.  I heart you, EB, you goddamn gorgeous millionaire.) But what I will say is that I allowed these things to send me into a big spiral of self-doubt and obsessive "where am I going" examination that sort of screwed up my week.

Anybody out there relate?  Anybody?

So...as the anxiety began to fade (aided by a glass of red wine and the season finale of ANTM...yay, brittany!) I started to think about this whole jealousy thing, and why it is that it's so pernicious and so painful when it arises.  And at first, in my examinings, all I could come up with was what jealousy is not:

I realized that jealousy is NOT, as it disguises itself to be, about someone getting something that is supposed to be yours.  There is not a limited supply of grace and loveliness that the Emily Blunt's of the world have sucked up, and so now there's none left for me.  That's not it.  And it's not, as it disguises itself to be, about some cruel unfair world.  (Though it seems that this is another big tenant of jealousy:  how can I find something about this situation or this person that PROVES that either a) it was totally out of my control, i.e., "she was probably raised with money"..."his parents helped him do that..." or b) that the coveted thing or situation was procured in an underhanded way, "she's probably a crazy party-girl"..."I'm sure he's an ego-maniac..." etc. etc.).  This is also, not usually the case.  It's not the world's fault.  (Guess who that leaves as the responsible party?  Gulp.)

It's not any of those things.  But, here is what I think it IS, this jealousy thing (and it's hopeful, people, I promise):

I think we get jealous because some part of us, way down deep, knows not just that we WANT said thing or situation (which obviously we do) but that we also are CAPABLE of attaining said thing or situation.  And that is the part that hurts.

Situations or circumstances or acquisitions that we feel are totally outside our reach, those things don't tend to make us jealous.  Those things tend to engender the sweeter emotions--awe and respect.  But when we're confronted with something that we feel we COULD have but for whatever reason we are not LETTING ourselves have it...that's when the jealousy monster roars into life.

This is just a hypothesis, mind you.

But if I'm right...if this is true, that another person's individual loveliness only feels like a knife in the heart when we (deep down) know that we ourselves are or could be that confident and gracious and fill-in-the-blank but aren't doing or being that thing...well then, that means there's hope! Doesn't it?!  Doesn't that mean that the fire of envy might actually be the fire of...attainable desire?

Doesn't that mean that all of those things we feel jealous of are actually signals, from deep within, that some part of us knows we are capable of greatness?  And isn't that a good thing? Necessary, even?

My best friend is still as lovely as she was when she was in college.  We have seen each other through some serious ups and downs in our lives, we have spent years apart and now (thankfully) years reunited, and I am more grateful for her with every passing month.  Had I let jealousy guide my actions, I would have missed out on all of that.  I would have closed myself off from her loveliness, instead of, as I have been lucky enough to orchestrate, been surrounded by it.

We do not have to be sufferers in the face of other people's success, we really don't.  What we can be is sensitive enough to our own feelings to hear that prickly call from within that says, Hey, you...grumpy pants.  That thing over there...that thing you want?  That's not just for all the lucky ones.  That's for you, too, lady.  Now go out and get it!

Go out and get it, Shanti-towners!  Your jealousy is calling you!

Me and Ghandi and a Wall of Mirrors...

Paul lately has been quoting this thing that he heard someone say (I'm sure he knows who said it, but I've forgotten) about comparison.  "Comparison," this person said, "is the worst form of violence...toward yourself."

I love this quote. He only had to get to the "violence" part when he first recounted it, and I knew how it was going to end.  (Because it is, isn't it, it's a little act of violence, to compare oneself to others?)  It's just a little tiny knife that we can drive into ourselves, sometimes (oh god, I hope this isn't just me) many, many times a day.

(I, seriously, I think I have a problem with this.)

I compare myself to the people in my life--to Paul (am I as a good a [fill in the blank] as he is?), to my family (am I as connected, as good a daughter/sister/aunt, etc.), to my friends (you name the topic), to other actors, to other yoga teachers, to other teachers in any discipline, to other women, to other women specifically my age, to other men my age, to other "wives", to other yoga students, to other people who live on my block, to old people, to BABIES for gods sakes (they're so wide open and present...why can't I be that present), to Mother Theresa, to Ghandi, to President Obama, to anyone who is on the news for doing anything truly inspired, to Oprah and to this one girl in my yoga studio who I think might be enlightened.

I'm sorry...did you just say you compare yourself TO GHANDI?

Yes, voice of reason, I did. Oh, what, I'm just supposed to resign myself to not being like Ghandi?!  I could be like Ghandi.  If I could just stop worrying about stupid shit, I could totally be Ghandi.

And here, of course, is where the problem lies, because (and this may come as a bit of a shock) no, I can not be Ghandi.  Or Oprah.  Or that girl at my yoga studio.  Because those identities have already been taken.  Also, most of those people, the ones who seem to just get it, the ones who are on zee path...probably they don't spend a lot of time comparing themselves to other people.  As it's hard to move very fast down any path when you are stopping frequently to stab yourself with small comparison knives.

Because the problem with comparison, with growth by means of comparison, is that...it never ENDS.  Never ever ever, if you are basing your good-ness or not good-ness on what you are doing in comparison to what other people are doing...will you ever find any lasting sense of peace.  Beeeeeecause (and I know this from experience) as soon as you've worked through one kink...as soon as you've befriended that girl or decoded the life of Ghandi enough that you don't feel quite so small in comparison...some new shiny person is going to come along who has it all figured out IN A TOTALLY DIFFERENT WAY and off you'll be thrown, once again.

It's like this, people...

A few of the studios I'm teaching in have mirrored walls, or just one mirrored wall, and it drives me CRAZY, because there is always one student (or two or three) who spends all of class checking themselves out in the mirror.  Now, some might say this could be a helpful practice because you can see what your body is or is not doing, and where you may or may not be out of line, and that's true, you can...but as soon as you take that mirror away, what are you left with?  You're left with a mental image of how your body looks doing a pose, and all your effort will go into recreating what you think the pose is supposed to look like.   Practice without a mirror, however, means that you have to get deep...you might have to close your eyes...you might have to rest your mind on subtleties of movement you didn't even know you HAD...the turn of your femur in your hip socket, the clench and release of your toes...and suddenly you are guiding yourself from this deep place of knowing.  Because when you're in that deep, and the alignment clicks into place, you don't SEE it (comparsion), you FEEL it.  You feel it's rightness.  You feel that steady ground of the right path beneath your feet.

And so, if comparison is an act of violence, then to get sweeter with ourselves, we have to pull our eyes away from the reflection...we have to start measuring our worth, our success, our goodness, by that "A-ha" click of bone stacking on top of bone, of muscle releasing, and of the deep sense in our own bodies that we are, indeed, just fine as we are.

About this, I think that Ghandi would approve...