Envy seems effortless. As we look at the “success” of our neighbor, our co-worker, best friend, cousin, parent, stranger, icon, etc. whether it be their car, house, title, “circle of friends,” or vocation, why do we so wish we were them or anybody but who or what we are? Why do we so easily slip out of our shoes on a whim and put ourselves into what we perceive their idealistic reality to be? We look over the fence and gaze, at times longingly at what they have, do, wear, drive, profess, or think only to wish we had it, or at least could have had it. Is our daily reality so heavy and arduous that it is our conundrum and therefore have our dreams become so Peter Pan like that they have morphed into our reality? Which one do we live the most in? Which one takes most of our time and imagination to make more real so that we can sup in the glory of possibility. It seems so easy to get lost in tomorrow and miss the now as we tumble through this life. Do we live like that? Do we lead like that? Are we always wishing for what is “becoming” or transpiring or “should be” so much so that we find what we do to be mundane and irrelevant? It becomes a swirling black hole when our dreams seem noble and good because they stem from our hard wire, our DNA only to find them potentially irrelevant or worse impossible because we have so discounted our daily lives.
I think life is the toil and sweat of pressing forward to our dreams while envy is a quick and easy way out. We can’t see that to find the other side of the fence we have to cross a large, barren field, scale a treacherous ravine and then meander through an uncharted valley floor before we can simply climb over the fence to the place where the grass is greener. Rather, I think the dream becomes real as we hold close to the anguish of learning and living so that we can not just see but understand what it takes to make our dreams real. Wanting what your neighbor or friend has is just a quick mental escape from the likely rough road you yourself need to define.