Envy’s Unsettling Gift of Emptiness

Days like these are some of the worst. Things feel neither enlivened by new potential to anticipate nor saturated with despair to overcome. There is no movement; neither tempest nor smooth sailing. They are the doldrums of the open ocean, with limp sails and glassy seas. And I am gripped with the anxiety that I do not belong out here and will die of thirst surrounded by so much water that I simply can’t take in. Days like these I am confronted by my helplessness, my restlessness with living without a clear direction. And I would rather rub my palms raw trying to paddle this galleon than surrender to lying on the deck accepting there is nothing to be done.

I have always been aware of a subtle guilt over the unearned privilege that enables me to take this time off, and feeling unproductive makes it intolerable. My mind sorts obsessively through old ideas that once inspired, wondering if I should choose one to commit myself to or if I need to let them all go to create space. I look at my lists of chores and errands, and wonder if tackling them will bring relief or if the real priority is to just sit in silence. I consider planning for my next trip and then remember how exhausted I was when I came home and that this silence will be waiting for me around every dark corner. All I want to do is eat and sleep, and yet I remain hungry and tired. Perhaps it is the sky darkening for Fall. Perhaps I need more vitamin D. Perhaps I am just a sensation junkie in withdrawal.

Much of my psychology is structured around envy – the pervasive sense, sometimes subtle and sometimes overwhelming, that everything and everyone, including myself, would be better if it or they were different. This belief first began forming when I was eight years old and, tired of being bullied by other kids and punished by adults, I decided to change myself so that people would like me. I was rewarded by friends who benefited from my willingness to take far more than my fair share of blame and responsibility, and adults who saw my achievement and concluded that their job was done.

This focus on self-improvement gave me a leg up professionally as I became adept at building rapport with all sorts of people and discovering ways of improving the systems around me, but this visionary, critical eye also made me prone to being controlling, anxious, judgmental, and resistant to accepting realistic limitations. I left job after job feeling like people wouldn’t listen to my ideas, people didn’t treat me the way I deserved, and things didn’t change fast enough or in the right direction. But underneath it all, I blamed my own greed, selfishness, restlessness, and ingratitude for being the wedge between where I was and the sense of belonging and acceptance I craved. Anything I did achieve was accompanied by a deep fear of losing what I had and a restless pining after the next thing, both of which deepened my belief in myself as impossible to please. None of my efforts at improvement were successful at creating the world I wanted to live in or turning me into the person I thought would be content.

I recently had a moment of inspiration when I realized that my sense of separateness and seeking could fixate on any potential solution, but there are clear patterns in what I long for. I envy people who are change agents, have a flexible schedule, get to travel, and make enough money to enjoy life’s sensual pleasures. I envy women who are unapologetic about the alternative lives they live, their needs, or their choices, and have supportive, affectionate, and confident partners. I envy anyone who is comfortable with their body, welcomes a wide range of touch, and fully engages in multiple forms of self-expression. And I envy most of all the people who take crazy risks to pursue their passion, and then it pays off big time as more money than they imagined, a great relationship, and the synergy of work they love within a community of support.

This insight offered great potential for guiding my efforts by showing me what to work towards, but the fact remains that I don’t believe that what worked for them is possible for me. I am different, inherently flawed, and simply not optimistic or determined enough. Then I recalled Sandra Maitri’s work on the spiritual dimension of the enneagram, which described so perfectly my profound sense of disconnection and the way I hold myself responsible for it because of a belief in my fundamental unworthiness. I seek out experiences of rejection and isolation, since the sense of longing keeps me connected, through hope, with what I crave. My envy may indeed be showing me the challenges I should tackle, but I suspect my resistance to taking firm action is rooted in a deeper knowing that success would not bring relief.

Sandra’s recommended path of spiritual development for those of my type mirrors what one attains when their journey is complete – equanimity. It is an acceptance of all things as they are without the compulsion to dramatize enthusiasm or suffering, and without the need for me to be someone else or for things to change. If I am able to be more centered in my internal chaos, she promises I will find there what I have been searching for: my inseparability from everyone else and, ultimately, an eternal well-spring of divine love. When I imagine fully settling into what’s inside of me, especially on these quiet days free from distraction, I first feel a fear of uncovering and owning that 8-year-old girl in me who was so rejected. Underneath that, I reach a place of emptiness, which brings forth both relief and a nearly intolerable, mortal fear. It is the sensation of drifting weightless as a jelly fish and of being enclosed in an underground tomb.

If I am empty, I am nothing and everything all at once. I am free from the need to horde and gorge and compete, because I am just as worthy of acceptance and nourishment as everyone else. Indeed, I am the embodiment of love and security, and I can feel them coursing through me with soothing vitality. But being nothing special, I am also vulnerable to being overlooked and forgotten, and I have always found those to be the most intolerable feelings. Kristen Roderick recently offered me hope through her upcoming on-line course on The Ground of Waiting. She shares that the place I find myself is what exists between letting go of the old self and birthing the new. It is one of the hardest parts of any transition because our culture of busyness and distraction does not allow the stillness, time, and patience we need to gestate. As constraints of time and money feed my anxiety to get where I think I’m going faster, and threaten to distract me from truly facing my inherent emptiness, I find myself torn between soothing my fear and continuing my journey inward. And I suspect as I always do whether the solution may lie in finding a way to do both.

I could spin my envy into a positive element in my life, giving me clarity on what I should be working towards and strengthening my stamina for being a rebel championing ideas before their time. I could use it to build myself up by thinking of everything I have to be grateful for and all the reasons others might envy me. Or I could follow envy’s invitation to sit with the emptiness and develop tolerance – and even love – for my inherent sense of dullness and lifelessness, which is as much a part of me as my courage and vision. I may then even be able to release myself from all the exhausting acts of cheerfulness and grief and optimism and rage and excitement and everything I’ve tried to control, because I no longer believe that I will wither away if I am not the biggest, brightest, and loudest. I can be sober, fully here, and open to feeling humbled and delighted by the on-going discovery of what actually is.

Nancy

“What has happened to our ability to dwell in the unknowing, to live inside a question and coexist with the tensions of uncertainty? Where is our willingness to incubate pain and let it birth something new? What has happened to patient unfolding, to endurance? These things are what form the ground of waiting.” Sue Monk Kidd