On Envy, Regret and Just Plain Wanting

I’ve been thinking about envy. Mostly the difference between wanting something someone else has, and simply wanting something. Or maybe wanting something I could have had but didn’t try hard enough to get, and envying others their effort. Those lines can be blurry.

Recently, envy surfaced while reading a book I’m reviewing for

The Seaboard Review of Books

, Imagining Imagining: Essays on Language, Identity and Infinity, by

Gary Barwin

.

His musings on kabbalah, music, science, poetry and philosophy made me feel slightly underachiever-ish, but that was balanced by what I did know about, like sleeplessness, dog-walking, and body parts. The teenage Barwin who plays multiple instruments and is deep into John Coltrane, Charlie Mingus, Lester Young, recordings from Black churches, and Bach, evokes myself at that age, a failed attempt at the violin behind me, listening to Top 100 songs on my transistor.

I let it go. After all, few of us are super-early bloomers. Maybe Barwin wasn’t even blooming yet, but simply had anachronistic taste.

Then I hit a chapter packed with the author’s life-long, dogged and successful pursuits –– poetry, fiction, essays and novels, from chat books to zines, to literary magazines, to awards. Never mind composing music. Not boasting, just thinking out loud about where the constant urge to make art led him. I felt suddenly punched in the stomach by a wave of choices not made, risks not taken, grants not received (or applied for), people not met, invitations to tour China not proffered.

Why, I wonder, was that not my life?

I remind myself that I had a novel published last October and all sorts of first person memoir and essays in all sorts of significant places. “Not too shabby”, as Adam Sandler would say. But that didn’t help. This feeling of having lived the wrong life (sorry kids) grabs me and leaves me teary for a day and a half.

Regrets grow less check-off-the-list-able, and no amount of lots of folks got late starts and Frank McCourt wrote Angela’s Ashes when he was 66 really help.

Writerly regrets aren’t new. I’ve discussed many with therapists over decades. But never when I was so old. Ok, this isn’t quite the twilight of my life, but it is the way way more years behind than ahead, part. Regrets grow less check-off-the-list-able, and no amount of lots of folks got late starts and Frank McCourt wrote Angela’s Ashes when he was 66 really help. And anyway, it’s more about what he and I were doing in the 65 years prior. Have you read Angela’s Ashes? McCourt’s childhood was brutal. Of course it took that long to find the words.

My latest therapist, who graciously received my bout of envy shortly after the stomach punch, and kindly refrained from hurling a list of my achievements at me, suggested an article she rereads every few years about envy. It’s written by Kathryn Chetkovich (pretty much the only piece she’s known for, by therapists and their envious clients). She’s the partner of Jonathan Franzen. Need I say more?

As a writer, Chetkovich was often preoccupied by her partner’s talent to the point of near paralysis. A particularly low moment comes on 9-11, shortly after Franzen’s already soaring novel The Corrections was published. She writes:

Because for one day, at least, for the first time in what felt like months, he and his work had been eclipsed—and I was relieved. That was the place envy had delivered me to.

A bold and mortifying confession. I wonder whether my therapist recommended the article because no envy-inducing situation could possibly be that bad, and, by comparison, my own might even be enviable. Or, does she simply want me to know that envy and regret are ubiquitous, sly and tenacious, popping up to punch us, just because they can.

But why right now when things are kind of happening?

Turns out right now is always as good a time as any to compare myself unfavourably – an old, unproductive and curiously comforting habit.

It can’t only be me who embodies Newton’s theory An object in motion remains in motion an object at rest remains at rest...

It’s not really about Barwin’s list of what I perceive as endless achievements but he might see as things he managed to accomplish despite self-doubts and insecurities. It’s more his consistent striving that puts my extended periods of sluggish inertia into sharp relief. It can’t only be me who embodies Newton’s theory An object in motion remains in motion an object at rest remains at rest — only me who needs a kick in the ass to act and a stick in my spokes to stop spinning.

As I try to sort out where exactly to go with my envy and regret – neither easy nor particularly flattering to let fly — it occurs to me a piece is missing. Something I long for (longing sounds so much nicer than envy), particularly in this time when the embrace of communities I took for granted (except the cancer pals who are always welcoming) feels increasingly conditional.

Barwin takes such joy in the stuff he creates and likely commiserates over, with other artists. I’ve been writing away for years in my echo-chamber for one. The rare moments of collaboration and in-it-togetherness made my heart soar. I wish I’d paid more attention to how meaningful that felt but assumed it was the exception rather than the rule. Get over it, Aviva. You picked a solitary pursuit.

Maybe it only feels like I’m on the outside of a community others are part of, when in fact there may be no such thing. But over the last few months I’ve gotten a sense of what belonging might feel like just from showing up, reaching out and meeting all sorts of kind and generous writers. One was getting her hair cut at the same time as me and I overheard her talking. We made a tea date and plan to read each other’s books.

It’s time to consider that my woe is me is often just reheated woe was me.

It’s time to consider that my woe is me is often just reheated woe was me. Maybe I’ll host a potluck where everyone brings their particular humble pie and laughs about how similar and different they taste.

You know what, fuck it. Let’s order pizza.

A pile of woe was me.