ENVY AND SELF-PITY

My mother was an envious woman. I can see her face as she looked at another woman's clothes or diamond ring or larger house - she raised her chin and took quick glances and shifted her shoulders as if she was puffing herself up. It was a look I recognized all through my childhood; I knew even when I was very young that she was measuring what she had against what she saw and she always wanted more.
     It took me a long time to realize how much of her envy I had absorbed. It took me so long because I knew envy was an ugly emotion and I didn't want to have it. But I did. I envied people who had more success than me, were better looking, more flamboyant, all those who seemed to glide through the world with ease and were recognized as special -- all those who had what I wanted and I wanted everything.  
     Once I admitted I was often envious, I began to recognize a certain feeling in my body, the place that got activated when envy claimed me. A sudden twist in my belly, a rawness in my throat, and other signs - when I felt them I could focus on them, focus on envy on the level of the body, and practice easing tension wherever it gathered. I began to understand that envy, like so many of the other feelings that made me suffer, was ephemeral, insubstantial and I didn't have to take it on.
     The biggest realization for me was how close envy is to self-pity. When I looked at how much everyone else had, I felt sorry for myself, who didn't have something someone else did. They had this and that and this, I didn't and never would. It was the "never would" that left me undone - not through anxiety or doubt - but through feeling sorry for myself. I can remember so many times I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling, working my way along the edges of a moebius strip of everyone has but I don't. There must be a fatal flaw in me that puts me in and keeps me in the muck. Poor girl, it will never change, you're not strong enough to change it. Poor poor girl. In fact nothing could change as long as I felt sorry for myself. There's nowhere to go with self-pity; it's a retreat from action and hope and any thought of change. 
     As I go along, I feel less and less envy. I've learned there isn't a finite amount of success or any of the good things in life. Other people's having takes nothing away from me. The world is an abundant place and there's more than enough to go round. I've also seen how worthless it is to compare myself and my life to anyone else. Given who I am, if I'm comparing, I'm finding myself less than, and that's become something I can't afford.
     Self-pity is more of a struggle. It works in subtle ways inside me and is often in disguise. I'll be cleaning the kitchen counters and suddenly think about kitchen counters I've seen in a magazine - so much newer and better than mine. I don't have to go further with the thought, but I know what it is, a prelude to self-pity. Kitchen counters may seem like a ridiculous example, but as I move through the day I carry with me all the patterns and habits of my negative mind. They're in the small and the large things, so present I don't even notice them, don't latch on to any one of them. They're simply the air I breathe. But now that I know I have them, I more often do come awake, notice envy or self-pity or any of the thoughts and emotions that hold me back, and try to put space between me and them. I can create the space because there are so many levels to consciousness that I can be my mind observing my mind. That space is where change happens. Nothing goes all at once but every letting go brings the things I want to change further down to size.
     I used to think that allowing myself to see that I suffered from things like envy or self-pity would destroy me. But the opposite has turned out to be true. Freedom comes with insight and insight comes with having the courage to look.