Envy

I have a play cycle I'm writing about the Seven Deadly Sins.

One of the Deadly Sins is Envy.  I have spent so much of the past three years being envious of other people.  I have always been an optimist, a relentless annoying optimist.  Maybe it was my Dad dying, maybe it was being out of the business essentially for the past three years.  But I felt left out.  At least working my job as a development person in TV made me feel like I was a player in the game.  But I wasn't the quarterback or the pitcher or the goalie.  I was just on the bench.

There was a period of time where I would see things on Facebook and it would instantly fill me with shame, regret, and anger.  It was usually about someone else's success: a play they wrote, a prize they won, a production, an opportunity.

Now I realize how useful that time was.

My time as a relentless optimist was dishonest.  I was just being happy for other people because I was supposed to be.  Not because I really was.  At least in the past five or so years.  At some point, I think when there was nothing but possibility in my life I genuinely was happy because I hadn't truly been disappointed in myself yet.

That happened.  And envy set in, even though I was denying it.  It was like a cancer.  And it was growing: Stage 1, 2, 3…

But finally I'm treating it and dealing with the fact that I have this illness in myself that I want to erase all traces of.  And what do I want to replace it with?

LOVE

Of course.  How relentlessly optimistic.

But I lived in FEAR.  Fear of not making it.  Fear of disappointing everyone who every thought I was something.  Fear of disappointing myself.

And it's unfair to do that to myself.  It's also very real.

But I am so enjoying the work I'm creating and the ideas I'm having and the life I'm living and the person I am that I am making less and less room for the fear.  It's not that I have to go to great lengths to get rid of it.  I just have to not have any space in my life for it.

I've about reached capacity.

And now that I've stopped denying my envy and acknowledging my fear and then replacing it with something counteractive, something different, I feel differently about my friends successes.

I can truly say, "That is their success."  And mean it.

My success is being as strong, educated, cultured and gifted as I am and being able to celebrate that.  My success is no longer having room for the fear.
My success is being inspired by things and creating work from what I'm inspired by.
My success is finally accepting love in my personal life and into my personal self.

So where does envy fit in?  Where does fear fit in?

There's no room at the inn.  So it just moves on to some place else where there is vacancy.  But not here.  Not with me.

I am grateful for time.
I am grateful for rest.
I am grateful for an open mind.
I am grateful for sleep.
I am grateful for having new and abundant ideas.
I am grateful for letting go of fear and envy.