Painful confession: I’m envious of those who have the things I want

By David McElroy · June 15, 2018

I never thought envy was a problem for me. I really didn’t.

When I discovered the Enneagram personality typing system a few years ago, it was scary how correct most of it was — both the flattering parts and the ugly parts. But descriptions I read said the “deadly sin” or passion of the Type 4 was envy.

“That couldn’t be me,” I thought, “because I don’t feel jealous of other people. I don’t wish bad things on those who have more than I do. I’m happy for those who do well.”

I didn’t give it much thought, because I was so certain it didn’t apply to me. But I’ve recently had to rethink that. It’s been painful. I’ve had to accept that what Shakespeare called “the green sickness” is hiding in my heart and eating at me.

It was hard to admit this to myself. I’m humiliated to admit it to you.

I was listening to an episode of the Typeolgy podcast which used a panel of people who identify as Type 4 when my delusion was shattered. Envy came up among the guests and all admitted it was an issue for them. Show host Ian Cron — who is a Type 4 himself — explained what envy really means in this context.

“Fours envy the normalcy, the happiness, and the apparent ease with which other people seem to move in the world,” Cron wrote in his discussion of the episode. “We just look at other people and think they just haven’t suffered as much as we have. We just have this perception that other people have had an easier time of it in this life.”

Cron pointed out that envy wasn’t necessarily the desire to tear others down. It could also be the simple feeling that we deserve what others have — that there’s something terribly missing in us — something which others seem to have.

And with that, I could no longer deny the green-eyed monster of envy that lived inside me. In one way, it felt like a relief to finally have such a painful insight. In another way, it was a humiliation, because it felt like one more horrible piece of overinflated ego or false self which needed to be resolved in my life.

Over the past few months, I’ve become painfully aware of my feelings of envy about specific people. It hasn’t gone so far for me that I wish bad things on those people. I’m just painfully aware of those who have what I want — and it hurts me to realize they have what I want so badly.

— I feel envy for men who are happily married to the sorts of women who I admire. I don’t want any random woman who might fall for me. No, I want a woman who is beautiful and brilliant and talented and amazing. I want to be admired and adored by a woman who I admire and adore. There aren’t many of them who I’ve known, but when I know of a man happily married to a woman I see in this way, I am full of envy. I don’t want his wife. I simply rage against the fates or my own decisions or someone else’s decision — whatever it is that keeps me from having what I see as my ideal.

— I have friends who are filmmakers and I’ve realized that I’m incredibly envious of their success. I don’t want to take away their success. I don’t want to sabotage them and I don’t wish they would fail. But I’m very envious that they’re doing what I wish I was doing. I have a friend right now who is in the middle of shooting his latest feature. (It’s about his fourth feature film and each has been better than the previous. He’s doing really good work.) As he posts updates on Facebook and Instagram about production, I’m happy for him — but I’m also incredibly envious. It upsets me that he’s able to do something I’m not yet doing.

— I’m envious of people who come from emotionally healthy families. They have love and support from parents and extended families. Their relationships are healthy and they have wonderful memories of childhood. I don’t wish they had experiences such as mine. I don’t wish they felt as though they had no families. But I’m really envious that they have the love and family happiness that has eluded me.

I hate admitting these things. This isn’t someone I want to be. When I realize I feel this way, I know I’m feeling sorry for myself instead of fixing the things that are wrong. I’m seeing myself as fatally flawed in some basic way — and that’s not a path toward becoming the healthier version of myself which I’ve been struggling to become.

I know that becoming more honest with myself — and admitting the truth to you — is another step on the long road to becoming the best version of me that I can be. It’s not a pleasant part of the journey, but I have to get through the self-denial to get to the self-improvement I need.

I’ve had to shatter a lot of my illusions about myself over the last decade or so. I’ve had to humble myself, but I’ve come to realize that admitting these issues and working to fix them makes me a far stronger person than someone who’s still in denial — as I was for so long.

Maybe that just my way of trying to tell myself I’m not so bad after all. It’s hard to say.

Note: If you really want to really understand the Enneagram Type 4 — including me — listen to the podcast episode (and the second part of it) which I linked above.

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In the coming months and years, we’re going to need inventive and productive people pursuing things that matter. We’re going to need smart and self-directed men and women who will find ideas and create enterprises that will help bypass the political class and build a new and better society. But everything I see in media right now seems geared toward telling people how to entertain and amuse themselves. The stories are full of advice about what to binge on Netflix and what games you should be playing while you’re stuck at home. We desperately need to ignore this advice and be looking toward building new futures instead. Being passive consumers got us where we are today. It’s time that we reclaim our former role — the one that made this country wealthy — as productive and free people who build far more than we consume. This could be a great opportunity for those who will take it. Turn off Netflix. Put down the video game controller. We need new ideas, new achievements, new goals — not more coach potatoes. This is the time to be thinking and creating and planning for the future that you and I both want.

The better I know myself, the more I realize that my core fault — and the source of many other failings in me — is that of believing on a deep level that everyone and everything in my world must be perfect, especially me. If I had seen any of this in myself as recently as 10 years ago, I would have dismissed it as a small failing that showed up only every now and then, but I now see it as the wellspring from which my other sins are born. It’s such an insidious belief — and one that can look on the surface like a reasonable desire to be good and right — that it’s hard to acknowledge it as the inner cancer it is. But until I understood this, it was always going to be impossible for me to get over my deep shame about my imperfection or to accept the love of another person, because she is bound to be flawed, too.

If it’s not yet spring where you are, you can at least enjoy 60 seconds of spring in the South with me. This was just outside my office late Thursday afternoon. Don’t you need a relaxing break today? See it on YouTube by clicking here.

It pays to be nice to the employees at Walmart — and everywhere else, for that matter. I was just in Walmart to buy some kitty litter when one of the employees called me over with a conspiratorial tone: “Hey, David, do you need some toilet paper?” she almost whispered. She had found a giant package hidden somewhere and she said she had been saving it for someone she really liked. So I’m the proud new owner of 24 additional mega rolls of toilet paper, which are worth something like $748 on the black market. On a more serious note, be good to people when you have a chance, as this employee was for me. And remember that people remember the way you treat them. I wouldn’t have treated this woman and her co-workers a bit differently in the past if I’d known she would someday do me this small favor, but there are benefits to treating people well, even if that’s not your purpose. Be good to each other.

My neighbor Cora — a retired teacher — called me while I was driving to the office earlier today to remind me that she wants to take me out to dinner sometime. We’ve talked about going out together, but we’ve never gotten around to coordinating a time. As she was about to get off the phone, she said, “I love you. You’re such a good neighbor!” And I told her that I loved her, too. I wonder how upset the racists of the unquestioned Jim Crow world — only about six decades ago — would have been that a white man and his elderly black neighbor care abut each other in such a way. There’s still a lot wrong with racial attitudes in the world today, but small things such as this remind me that we’ve come a long way.

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