I have often thought that of the Seven Deadly Sins, ENVY
has to be one of the worst.*
I have (too often) heard people use the word ‘worth’
when asking about someone’s income, as in What Is He Worth? I can’t answer such
a thing in monetary terms because that only tells me how much money the person
has, not what he is like as a human being.
I have watched shameless behavior toward wealthy
people. I can assure you that the ‘Yes Man’ is alive and well and still hoping
that some wealthy person will pass on the secret of his success, if only the
envious one hangs about long enough to discover this secret. Since I was in and
around the financial world for a long time, I had occasion to observe some very
pathetic self-abasement first hand as well as other shameless groveling & sycophancy**.
What is it that the person hoped to get from the
financially successful person? Did they think they would be adopted or
mentioned in the financier’s will? Paul Mellon once said, that when he was in
the army in World War 2, one person decided to become his best friend. I think
Mellon had been really rich long enough to recognize insincerity when he saw
it.
Meanwhile, some Envy must be involved. Why else do
certain people seem happy to see how ‘the mighty have fallen’? The word
Schadenfreude is a German word for ‘the pleasure derived from another’s
misfortune'. Nice, there is even a word for this awful enjoyment of another’s
suffering.
What do we know of another’s life? What do we know of
the hardship and challenges they may be facing? I would say very little. Because
I feel that we actually know very little
about what anyone we know has experienced and lived through or lived with, we
should exercise caution instead of envy.
When Aristotle Onassis had myasthenia gravis, or
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis had Non Hodgkin's Lymphoma and had to have Trepanning
done to inject chemotherapy directly into her brain, what good did her jewels
or his money do for them.
The world knew of the losses she suffered of many
miscarriages and the assassination of her husband and brother in law but what
she felt, she said, she would let others describe and that it was not coming
directly from her.
Meanwhile, the loss of his son and heir, we are told caused
Aristotle Onassis unbearable anguish and the reward he offered for information
as to the cause of his death in an airplane, was not, I believe ever claimed.
Even Onassis daughter ended up dying of a heart attack
in a bathtub in South America after several failed marriages and a daughter
with a man who she supported. Her estate or her daughter probably still
supports him and his wife and their family.
The Tobacco heiress Doris Duke and her cousin Woolworth
heiress Barbara Hutton both ended their lives in sad circumstances and isolated
and alone. This was also true of Howard Hughes. Robert Maxwell drowned,
apparently just before he was going to be vilified and exposed for malfeasance.
The point is, a good life is not guaranteed, just
because a person seems to have an enviable lifestyle and money beyond most
people’s dreams. It seems people who have studied Happiness recently are
finding that all of our assumptions about it are wrong. I need to see what they
have found and see if it adds to understanding the phenomena better.
Meanwhile, I urge you to look to your own life and
satisfaction because you and I don’t know much about someone else’s life and
what kind of life anyone else is living. In fact, we will be lucky to make a
success of our own lives, if we don’t mind your own business better and don't stop distorting
our own perspective by looking into and after other people’s lives with Envy.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins - Wikipedia
says that these “are known as capital vices or cardinal sins. They are
considered a form of Idolatry-of-Self wherein the subjective reigns over the
objective.”Today they are usually given as: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.”
**Sychophant www.thesaurus.com/browse/sycophant
adj. deferential, groveling.
abject · adulatory · bootlicking · bowing · brownnosing · compliant · cowering
· crawling · cringing · flattering · humble · ingratiating.
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