ENVY IS GOOD

Envy is a great thing, and if you spark it in others, you're helping them out!

"They're all beautiful. I want to disappear." I spoke under my breath at the beginning of my dance class, prophesying my resolution for the day's class. My butt was planted firmly on my yoga mat, but my brain was in a pit of self-deprecation. No mind to be found, my body noodled itself through the opening warm-up.

Although this warm-up was the same as always, the instructor made a point to correct my movements for this portion. She hadn't seen me much before, as this wasn't the typical class I attended. I wondered if the extra attention she gave me was due to her perception that I was newer than I actually was. Certainly, I can't be that bad?

As the class progressed and we moved on to the dance portion, I marveled at how my willowy classmates effortlessly mastered each move. Each step I took seemed to be wrong, and with each correction the instructor gave me, I managed to mess up even more. I fell, and I got up and continued again, and fell. At the end of class, the teacher put her hand on my shoulder and said, "Thanks so much for coming. You did great." But not in the way where I genuinely believed she thought I did great, more like a participation award "bless your heart" way.

Changed clothes, and one of my beautiful classmates for the day said, "Are you coming to the supplementary class tomorrow? Hope to see you there :)"

What a bitch! She's saying that I need to do more work. It's not my fault you're tall and beautiful, and I suck.

As I walked home, all sorts of injustices raced through my head.

The teacher psyched me out because she kept correcting me! They’re all naturally better than I am! I wish I were thinner, taller, and graceful-ler!

But then something shifted. The mental spiral started reorganizing itself into something more useful:

If I envied the other women's bodies? Well, I could either go more to the gym, get plastic surgery, or decide to stop being upset, come to terms with my body the way it is.

I'd like to think I'm pretty aware of my feelings and can recognize when a response to someone else is due to an insecurity. I don't tend to really covet what others have in a malicious way. I don't wish them any harm, I don't feel schadenfreude, nor do I think others should have less to make me feel better about what I have. I tend to turn that feeling inward or blame myself. With that said, other people may experience these emotions differently. It's a human experience.

A common fear about being seen is feelings of unworthiness, but an equally challenging discomfort that many face is the fear that others will feel bad about themselves. Maybe if you’re too seen and someone develops envy, they’ll punish you for it. Or what if they punish themselves? Nobody wants to make anyone feel bad about themselves, right? So you shrink away with hopes of dodging the evil eye’s scorn.

Something even deeper that I or "we" can do is ask myself: what does that envy make me feel about myself? Perhaps not excelling in a dance class is triggering feelings of being "stupid" that I thought I had resolved in my childhood. Perhaps it's my ego nagging at me to quit this new practice in an effort to save itself from perceived failures? This reflection only came about because I allowed myself to look at the envy I experienced with grace.

Envy is a great thing, and if you spark it in others, you're helping them out! If you feel it, that's great too. It may not feel like it at the moment, but all emotions (even the unpleasant ones) are hints from your higher consciousness about parts of yourself that you may be neglecting.

When that beautiful classmate invited me to the supplementary class, my insecurities allowed my immediate reaction to read malice into kindness. But what if she genuinely wanted me there? What if my envy was telling me something important about my own desires? Not just to be beautiful or graceful, but to be the kind of person who shows up consistently, who doesn't let embarrassment keep them from growing?

Envy isn't just about wanting what someone else has. It's about recognizing what you're capable of becoming. The uncomfortable truth is that we rarely envy things that are completely outside our realm of possibility. You don't envy a bird for flying because you fundamentally accept that you can't fly. But you might envy someone's confidence, their skill, their apparent ease in the world, because some part of you recognizes that these things are achievable.

Envy is good because it tells the truth about what we want and what we believe is possible for ourselves. The discomfort is just the price of admission to growth.