Envy

This is going to sound like the letters page on a terrible female magazine...:eek: I apologise in advance :D

Well, I am affected by envy. I realised it quite often in my daily life... Especially whenever I hear of anyone getting into a 'wonderfully' stable relationship, I feel sort of annoyed and find any reason in my mind to find negative sides on it :eek: :eek: :eek: It was maybe natural when I was depressed about loneliness, but now I wouldnt even want a relationship so what am I envious about?
But it's not just that... I feel envy - though of a different kind - sometimes when someone has achieved something much better than me, especially if they are younger... Maybe this just comes from insecurity and the fact that I feel old so I always feel like I have to prove that being older makes me somehow 'better' than someone...:eek: :eek: :eek:
In some cases it must be greed, it's like I want to have everything so nothing would satisfy me, like if I had a boyfriend who is, let's say, blonde, I'd wish for a black-haired one, but in the opposite case I'd wish for the opposite...and so on.

Wow envy, greed..I think I'm actually affected by all of the 7 sins, except lust for obvious reasons.

Any sympathy, advice, stories of sin and redemption to share with this desperate case?

(:blush: too much information?)

Take a deep breath and have some chocolate. :)

Wow that was quick... but please stop encouraging my suicidal love of the divine but fattening stuff known as chocolate...next time I need an alibi for an overdose of it, I'll end up thinking 'ihrocks allowed me' :D

But chocolate is good for you! It has mighty morphin' endorphines! They taste yummy and make everything all better.

I understand what you are saying. I get that feeling sometimes too. but I can't explain it, it's just a part of life. :)

While ducktape can heal all external wounds, chocolate heals all the internal ones.

Sometimes I feel that way also, but then I remind myself that other people might have problems that I don't know about and that I don't know their situation. Just like when I feel superior when i see a jogger stop before I do, I have to remind myself that I don't know the actual length they ran or in what condition they are...

*****Corniness Warning*******

Like the Styx song : It's a Grand Illusion.

****double corniness warning*****

sometimes when i feel completely incompetant, i take a computer game, usually a first person shooter, turn it to easy, or just use cheatcodes, and show them all that i am GOD...this is fun for about 5 minutes.

Well...'tis not easy to be an ordinary human being...

Koa, we all have things we're ashamed of. at least you're aware of this! :)

and yes, i have a story to share - actually an excerpt from a paper i'm working on - it's my deepest darkest secret. i understand if you're all completely horrified after reading it. i would be. :(


"On a personal note, I chose the topic of Mexican immigration to further my understanding of Mexican culture, and to try to open my heart and eradicate my own deep personal issues with Mexican persons. These issues are hard to face, and to complicate things I have dear friends who are Mexican. Having grown up in California, I (not infrequently) experienced some of the racism normally directed at persons of Latino descent, and greatly resented it, not being one myself. Unfortunately I disliked not only the perpetrators of this racism, but Latinos as well, simply for being a despised group that I was discriminated against for resembling. Explicit in some of these incidents was the message that I didn’t “belong;” I was stopped when I went to visit my (white) grandparents once, for example. One of the staff at their retirement housing development accosted me as I walked to their home; she asked what was I doing there and did everything but call to make sure that I was, in fact, visiting kin. At the root of her rudeness was, I think, an inability to fathom that non-white persons had any right to tread the same ground as whites.
I also believe that, in California at least, part of the cultural dislike of Mexican persons is the fact that they have a discrete, distinct lifestyle. When one has political clout, due to population mass, it becomes easier to hold on to one’s ethnic identity and not assimilate fully, which is in turn perceived as threatening. And at the heart, I think, of assimilated Americans’ refusal to accept Mexican persons, is a deep and unacknowledged sense of shame. The United States basically swindled huge tracts of land from Mexico, and that wrong (in my opinion) underlies and underwrites a refusal to share America with those person with whom it was stolen from."

I think what you have, Koa, this case of 'envy,' seems far from unusual; indeed, we all suffer from this severe chronic, and often overwhelming state.
I feel suddenly reminded of John Hobbes' theory of the three faculties that drive human actions most: greed, envy, and fear. How cynical, eh? :eek:

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Originally Posted by Koa

This is going to sound like the letters page on a terrible female magazine....

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Are you suggesting there is some kind of correlation between being female and an inability to be content with one's life for longer than fleeting episodes, all due to some affinity the female of the species shares with several of the so called 'seven deadly sins'...

Or are you merely suggesting that there are some terrible magazines out there..........

*huddles in his 'man' bunker waitng to see what tempest THIS comment stirs*

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Originally Posted by baddad

Are you suggesting there is some kind of correlation between being female and an inability to be content with one's life for longer than fleeting episodes, all due to some affinity the female of the species shares with several of the so called 'seven deadly sins'...

Or are you merely suggesting that there are some terrible magazines out there..........

*huddles in his 'man' bunker waitng to see what tempest THIS comment stirs*

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The correct answer is absolutely the second one. Well I've also seen men writing to those magazines at times, but writing that post made me feel like I was writing one of those letter of the sort of "I like my best friend's new sweater and I would kill her for that so that I can get her boyfriend too whom by the way she stole from my cousin" and such :D I even imagined a page with the picture of some sort of psycho-expert with dyed hair on the side of a page, and her horribly banal answer... Aww come on, have you ever bought one of those magazines on a summer day to have fun with your friends laughing at the letters page?

As for envy, well I thought mine was higher than normal, so that I was worried...

And as for chocolate, that proves I'm also affetcted by gluttony.

And I take as a compliment the link between women and deadly sins. Better to be real than to be holy...

I think that 'Chocolate love' stuff is knackers, perpetated by women's magazines and the like. It's just not that good! A large Gin and Tonic with lots of ice and a bit of lime squeezed on the rim is far more satisfying.

Old! Born in 1982! Bloody hell. I'm 12 years older and I don't feel old. Read 'Prometheus Rising' by Robert Anton Wilson, quick!

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Originally Posted by Bandini

I think that 'Chocolate love' stuff is knackers, perpetated by women's magazines and the like. It's just not that good! A large Gin and Tonic with lots of ice and a bit of lime squeezed on the rim is far more satisfying.

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Oh no...women magazines don't deal with chocolate (they deal with envy letters and love letters and advice on your sexual life and on your choice of clothes *yawns* oh and on your make up, how to forget that), but women talk used to treat chocolate as a big evil thing. The first things connected with chocolate used to be spots, fat and therefore guilt. Now chocolate seems to have been revaluated :) Sometimes I really feel there's nothing more satisfying than chocolate.
(and no, not even a gin and tonic...maybe 2 or 3 or 4 can be satisfying... but then it might get bad again :D And they dont satisfy as much as chocolate, oh no...)

Btw, age is what you feel, not the age you are... When I was 16 I started feeling like 80... Now I only feel old sometimes and last year I started to act as silly as a teenager again so I'm somehow going back...

Wow, *idea* we can make a cathartic envy-game here...we mention one thing we envy so we all feel like sinners and don't envy each other cos we are allo so bad :D :D :D

Shall I start?
I envy people who talk little and say a lot.

WARNING: This rant is in no way personal - just deeply held conviction.

Womens magazines do go on about this kind of stuff - along with lots of other stuff: e.g the notion that men are moronic slobs, who lay on the couch watching football, and can't communicate etc. This media bollox actually affect the way people behave, act and live! . I've read womens magazines since I was 8 years old, and they do go on about crap like that - all that 'oooh it's so naughty' balls - it's a sweet, sometimes a little bitter, foodstuff that sets off a few dopamines or whatever, and if you eat too much it's pure greed, not 'naughty'; but because it's chocolate it's different - all that giggle giggle, it's so naughty. No, a speedball and a bottle of Chivas Regal is 'naughty'.

Envy isn't really one of the sins I 'do' to any great extent. Not that I'm going to cast the first breezeblock. It's just, I think I'll keep my sins hidden in this forum! Brave and honest of you to 'fess up though. Ten Hail Mary's for the envy and five for the chocolate gluttony.

I do engage in the sin called talking at the top of my head! Some hours for instance I can feel my mortality very acutely - I just get on a different train of thought. DIY Cognitive therapy - the only way forward. To paraphrase William Burroughs: "Exterminate all negative thought". Just get that mental laser firing!

C.S. Lewis, as I recall, talks about the issue of envy in the "Beyond Personality" portion of his "Mere Christianity" book. When you see some wonderful thing happening to another you can choose to: a) ignore it; b) pretend it doesn't exist or won't last; or 3) be glad for them.

Wishing good upon others is probably one of the highest traits of character. There's a Peggy Lee song she sings to her "ex" where she says "And most of all I wish you love." If she is really, really hurting and can wish that upon him, now that is nobility.

yay. today i am noble. big whoop.

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Originally Posted by byquist

C.S. Lewis, as I recall, talks about the issue of envy in the "Beyond Personality" portion of his "Mere Christianity" book. When you see some wonderful thing happening to another you can choose to: a) ignore it; b) pretend it doesn't exist or won't last; or 3) be glad for them.

Wishing good upon others is probably one of the highest traits of character. There's a Peggy Lee song she sings to her "ex" where she says "And most of all I wish you love." If she is really, really hurting and can wish that upon him, now that is nobility.

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Well that's extremely true I think...
When one of my best friends, at that time a historical spinster like me, got her first boyfriend, I was at the same time happy for her and envious... Other times I'm just plain envious... I usually tend to ignore things that make me feel like that, and I think sometimes I come across as a bit cold cos I dont jump screaming congratulations but I prefer not to pretend too much (of course I dont get to the point of being rude...)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bandini

WARNING: This rant is in no way personal - just deeply held conviction.

Womens magazines do go on about this kind of stuff - along with lots of other stuff: e.g the notion that men are moronic slobs, who lay on the couch watching football, and can't communicate etc. This media bollox actually affect the way people behave, act and live! . I've read womens magazines since I was 8 years old, and they do go on about crap like that - all that 'oooh it's so naughty' balls - it's a sweet, sometimes a little bitter, foodstuff that sets off a few dopamines or whatever, and if you eat too much it's pure greed, not 'naughty'; but because it's chocolate it's different - all that giggle giggle, it's so naughty. No, a speedball and a bottle of Chivas Regal is 'naughty'.

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LOL that's true too... Last year in England I found a women magazine on the train and I took it (I was very scared cos I wondered if that was weird to do in England, just pick up an abandoned magazine) and it was like...lol it was like men are prehistorical beings who express themsleves through grunts and you have to interprete what they say (well some are I think...;)). And wonderful advice on how to plan your holiday to Ibiza (*feels sick*) and an awful lot of stuff about how to behave when drunk and hangover (sooooo English, here you're 1000 times more likely to find adivce on how to survive a 2-billion-calories meal with relatives).
The funniest thing I ever read was on Cosmopolitan: it was like: if you go out with a guy and f**k at the first date, noone will think you're a slut, you'll just lose some mystery... It sounded so funny, what's this mystery about?