Dr. Hahn's question for today: When have I experienced the power of envy? What were its consequences in my life, and how can I experience healing?
In this chapter, Dr. Hahn explains that there is a difference between jealousy and envy, writing, "Technically speaking, jealousy seeks the good that is perceived in another person, whereas envy seeks to destroy it."
I believe that a little jealousy can actually push us to success. I'll admit that I am a very competitive person and when I see what others in the field of music and photography are doing around me, it often pushes me to get a little better at what I do in these areas. My on-going joke is, I'm so competitive, it bugs me when cars pass me on the Interstate.
There's a rather famous story that circulates in Jewish circles during the days of repentance about a rabbi in a small town who decided to ban all yetzer hara (the evil inclination; the Jewish faith teaches that man is born with both evil and good inclinations and that we have the responsibility to choose to do good or evil). As the story goes, on that day, nothing was accomplished, by anyone. The lesson in the story is that the line between good and bad is not always clear and without a little competitiveness, all productivity in that little town came to a screeching halt.
So it is with jealousy and envy. While a little jealousy sometimes pushes me to be better at what I do, occasionally I am envious to the point of wishing someone would fail so I could be the best. One of my most vivid memories of envy having run amok in my life goes back about to the summer of 1998. That summer there was a tall, handsome man, an attractive blonde woman, and two handsome children sitting in the pew every day at morning Mass. I was a single mother of three young children at that time and it grieved me greatly to see this family: everything I had ever wanted but had failed to achieve was paraded before me, in high relief, every morning. At the end of the first week, they and I made friends - she, Jodi, was also a music minister at her home parish on Long Island - and during the course of our conversation I also learned that Jodi was not the wife or the mother. You see, Leo's wife had died the previous year, and Jodi was the nanny. Yes, young Margaret and Leo's mother had been pregnant with their baby brother (named Maximilian, after the saint who had sacrificed his life in Auschwitz in order that a fellow prisoner with a wife and child would be spared), had contracted an illness that could only have been cured by aborting the baby, which she chose not to do, so both were lost. So - as much as I wanted to be sitting in the pew with a tall handsome husband and two gorgeous kids - could I really have drunk from the cup that Leo's wife and family had drunk? No. That incident taught me everything I need to know about covetousness and envy.
Dear Lord, I pray to remember that I am the best expression of who you made me to be.
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