“It is the duty of every person in Israel to know and to consider that he is unique in the world in his particular character and that there has never been anyone like him in the world, for if there had been someone like him, there would have been no need for him to be in the world. Every single man is a new thing in the world and is called upon to fulfill his particularity in the world.”
~ Martin Buber (1878-1965),
Have you ever walked through an upscale neighborhood with fancy cars parked in the driveways, and found yourself wishing that you could live like them? “I wish I lived like that,” you might think to yourself as you walk back to your one-room apartment.
Or maybe you resent the good fortune of a friend. Perhaps he will be taking a trip around the world, while you are stuck in your dead-end job which you can’t quit, because you must pay down your credit cards. Or maybe you covet someone’s job, looks, or relationship.
All of this envy, so difficult to feel, is like the one-two punch of longing and felt deficiency right there in your solar plexus. What are we to do when other lives seem better than ours, and we feel envy?
I recall years ago, while taking a break during a retreat, I found myself sitting beside a man who had lived the very life I had once dreamed for myself. He was active on the boards of different international non-profits. He had published several books. He associated with persons I admired. He even coined a word which now is commonly used.
The more he talked, the more worthless my seemingly nondescript life felt. By the time the bell rang for us to return to session, I felt return to full force all the ambition I once had felt for that path which I had dreamed, but he had lived. I wondered whether I had made a mistake to have chosen the different path which I had taken through life’s woods. His life seemed like gold; mine like lead.
Again in session, sitting with and inquiring into the fog of envy which enveloped me, from deeper within there sprang to mind the image of a bee hive alive with bees tending to the honeycombs. With the image of the hive, emerged the thought that life is like a beehive, and we each have our own honeycombs to tend. The honeycombs of my fellow retreatant and I were of neither more or less value than each other. They were simply different. He had his life to tend; I had mine. Life, existence, Being – whatever you might call it, simply asked that we tend to our own honeycombs with diligence.
With this teaching from within, my envy then transformed spontaneously into a peaceful contentment for the givenness of my life. Of course, now and then envy returns. When it does, I remember the beehive and my honeycomb, and there returns a basic trust in the givenness of my life as it is and the course of its unique unfolding.
Neither is my life better nor worse than yours; neither is your life better nor worse than others whom you might envy. We’re all just different from each other. Personal authenticity asks that we live and respect that difference of our unfolding lives which are our very own honeycombs to tend.
An expectation of another person is a belief that another person should act, think, or feel in a certain way. When insisted upon, expectations of others become demands upon another person’s individuality which violate the personal boundaries of the other person.
Imagine two persons who at the end of their lives are identical in attainments. Two doctors – with the same degrees from the same school, both happily married with good children, living in identical houses, driving the same cars, etc., etc.. Yet why might one feel fulfilled while the other feel abject despair?
What can we really know with certainty about the mysteries of existence? Yet somewhere on the planet today, like too many days before us, because of his or her religious convictions an adherent of one god will bludgeon to death an adherent of another god. But let’s put this religious certainty into perspective.
We humans walk around deaf, dumb, and blind to a secret of human anatomy. You might think that the great minds of modern science would have discovered it, but no! So, I’ll bust the secret open.
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