Envy? Kids Call it "The Green Eyed Monster"

Kids call envy "The Green Eyed Monster." Maybe it would be better to call it "The SuperHero." I was blessed to receive an e-mail from SzH, a Last Quarter Interloper, that is, an email from one who lives in a faraway country, Hungary, and a further-away Quarter (I suspect Quarter II); it's the further-away Quarter that has me calling this lady an interloper.

ALL INTERLOPERS ARE WELCOME

WE NEED SOME YOUNG BLOOD

She was a friend of one of my mid-Third Quarter kids when he lived in Hungary and she reminded me that I had mentioned that I would turn, soon, to riffing on the distinctions between toxic envy and beneficent envy. Perchance, one of the choices in the 4th Q is between envying the 2nd and 3rd Q'ers or relying on them for capacities such as memory ... err ... and holding the door open. Reminds me ....

Years ago, I wrote a lengthy piece for a Student Handbook for a training institute that I directed. It was on Ethics. A colleague, an older psychiatrist whom I greatly admired complimented it but added that it would've been sufficient had I said that "an ethical healthcare practitioner does what they told their patient that they would do." Thank you, SzH, for trying to keep me ethical. The Last Quarter fatigue has both M, GuntherDog and I tired and groaning, sometimes forgetful. Maybe, just maybe, GuntherDog's groan is to remind me that he's got old-man problems, too.

Maybe I should begin with a component part of Beneficent Envy. I'm thinking of valuing and giving another credit. My own thinking about this matter maybe comes out of the writings of Theodore Reik, a psychoanalyst who loved many women and who wrote broadly about love. He reasoned that we love another when (not whenever, perhaps, but when) we recognize in them something that we wish we could have in ourselves but don't or can't or think we don't. Years ago, I wrote a piece about the envy I experience for M and her relationship to our spawn. I'll never be the Mama or the GrandMama, for that matter. There's no reason for me to seek to strip M of her title that her grown son bestowed upon her at her 50th some years ago: The Mommy.  I don't think I need to parse that expression and don't know that I can, but it describes a primal connection that doesn't make it into the mysterious connection between Father and Child. Goya portrayed a Savage God eating his children. Michelangelo recognizes the sufferer both on the cross and later draped over Mother in the Pieta and EveryBaby held by the Mommy of all the statues of Maria mit Kind.

The Romans said: Mater semper Certa ... you're always certain of who your Mother is ... but Pater semper Incertus? (or was that "insertus") ... who can be certain whether or not Daddy is who he (or Mommy) says he is?

Beneficent Envy is all over the place as you play and age in the Fourth Quarter. M and I see young Mothers -- with and without partners -- walking with their adoring babies in the supermarket and department stores of the before lunch World. Much of the time it's quite beautiful ... and enviable. Young people doing what we once  did ... saying the garsh-darn cutest things. What a gift it was when my youngest gave -- albeit askew -- blessing to her parents' relationship when she complained at 4 or 5 years, holding Cuddles-the-Bear: "Life isn't fair. You get to sleep with Mommy and I get to sleep with this silly old bear."

Beneficent envy gives, as it allows for or accompanies love. 

When one of my older kids was 16 ... 30+ years, ago, he was on the phone after school at 3. When I came out of my office at 350, he was on the phone. And at 450 and 550. Somewhere in that period of time, I was trying to figure out why I was so annoyed. I tried on a few possible reasons for my dis-ease.

He's blocking incoming calls ... Well, we had two lines.

He's costing us a lotta money ... Well, now, Howard: his girlfriend lives two blocks away.

He's not doing his homework .... Not that, either ... he never does his homework!

It wasn't until my last trek by the phone when I could -- smiling -- say:

Hey, Guy, I'm envious of you. You're 16, good-lookin', 

got lots of energy, have a cute young girlfriend and 

get to write your own schedule of responsibilities. 

I'm not 16, your Mom and I are both gettin' on in years, and 

I work. Yeah ... I'm envious of you, that's it.

His response was quick and telling. He kindly patted (maybe petted describes it better ... "Good Dog") me on the shoulder, said "thanks, Dad, that's nice to hear" and went back to talking to his Sweetie.

Beneficent envy doesn't take away or even seek to take away.

Toxic envy is thoroughly different. Toxic Envy seeks to take away and gives nothing in return. In the stories that grew up around the betimes contradictory account of the Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis, a first Eve was conjured about by the commentaries. She was born an equal to Adam (from the Hebrew adamah ... earth ... as if he was named EarthMan) and asked to be thus considered. The male God excommunicates her, Lilith in these tales, from the Garden East of Eden. There, she sits casting spells over other women, especially pregnant women. The (male) writers of this mythology imagine her inducing miscarriages onto those carrying child.

Those suffering from toxic envy -- and suffer, they do -- have experienced loss and re-experience the feelings associated with that loss coupled with rage when another has what they've lost.

Toxic Envy seeks to take away and knows no love.

When ascendant, Toxic Envy moves to destroy all good and to require all that is painful. While that may sound exaggerated, one would be as hard-pressed to discover any pleasure in those who are dominated by this type of Envy as these sufferers are to allow any pleasures in others.

Beware of Lilliths  -- Be They Men or Women -- Young or Old.

Again ... maybe what allows the Last Quarter to be a Playground of Pleasures is the capacity for gratitude for both what is and what was ... even though what was may only be fully active and visible in those we are destined to leave behind. 

Dear SzH ... This is the best I can do, this morning ... 

"Climb every Mountain" & Carpe every Diem! 

HHC