I’ve been thinking a lot about envy. On the one hand, it’s an
insidious emotion: one that can twist you in and out leaving you
feeling bent out of shape with longing and desire.
On the other, it’s very, very real. It may be one of the Ten
Deadly Sins, but who hasn’t, from time to time, felt that oozing,
green pang in the heart? That pull toward what others have.
Envy can create a quiet desperation or bring on bouts of the
blues. Sometimes it makes you want to lash out at another person or
find something wrong with the picture. They may have, say, the house
of your dreams, but they’re terrible, terrible people. Really.
Undeserving. Bad.
I have been accused more than once of envy; of coveting what they
neighbor has. It’s a natural state of affairs in an urban
neighborhood like Park Slope. We all live on top of one another and
know all too well what people’s houses are worth, what people do for
a living, what scores children get on standardized tests, which
schools they get into, where people go on summer vacation, how big
their backyard is.
Even in a seemingly homogeneous
environment like this, it’s amazing how incredibly stratified this
community is. Park Slope is a class society like any other in some
very obvious and not so obvious ways.
There’s what people refer to as old Park Slope and new. Old PS is the generation of dwellers who got here early. They are Legal Aid
lawyers, social workers, teachers, and artists. They live anywhere
from Fifth Avenue to Prospect Park West and send their kids to public
schools and summer on Cape Cod or in Ulster County. They have, by most
standards, a solid middle to upper class life. And, by getting in early on
the real estate boom, they have a nice little
nest egg, something to retire on.
On the other extreme, there’s new Park Slope. This includes those who work in
finance, corporate law, and other lucrative careers, in which the
yearly bonus can be the size of ten "middle class"
salaries. Some were priced out of Manhattan in the 1990’s and grabbed the four story brownstones, the apartments in Prospect Park West doorman buildings, the loft-like dwellings. They send their kids to
private schools, own weekend houses and spend vacations skiing in Switzerland or on sailboat adventures around the Carribbean.
Beyond those two extremes, there is much diversity: freelancers,
the low paid, underpaid, the under and unemployed, the chronically broke, the
not so forward thinking, the one’s who missed out on the house, the
apartment, the neighborhood when it was cheap.
Real estate is one measure of success
around here and a huge source of ENVY. And it afflicts people at every
level. Those who pay high rents envy the rent-stabilized. Those who
own apartments envy those with a house, those with the three story
houses envy those with the four. Those with the small wood frames long
for the limestone or the brown. Those on a wide
street like Union or Ninth Street, say, long for the quiet and
tree-lined. Those without a view of the Park or a city desire a
view. Those who can’t afford to renovate envy those who can.
And on
and on.
A certain measure of success and a
definite source of envy in Park Slope is the kitchen renovation. The
very concept makes me twinge inside: I would so love to shop for a
stainless steel refrigerator or a high-tech German
dishwasher that doesn’t make a sound. French tiles, slate floors,
granite or marble counters. Fixtures. I overhear renovation stories at Connecticut Muffin all the time and it leaves me with a pang. I’m not
gonna lie, I wish I could afford to do it. Why not?
There are other kinds of envy, too. In Park Slope and other
places, people envy one another for satisfaction in marriage,
in career, in family life. Oh they
look like such a perfect family. Or: He or she must have such a
satisfying career. Or: their kids are so well-behaved and polite. We
envy others for the choices they’ve made and their so-called smarts.
We envy the way they look, what they weigh, how often they attend Yoga class, their taste in clothes.
We idealize those we barely know and make up stories and
assumptions about them. At least I do. Some of us create equations
that may have no truth value at all. A big house means a happy life.
A nice suit means a satisfying career. A high achieving child means a
satisfied parent.
Envy is the most subjective of emotions. It exists at all
levels and it’s a constantly moving target. It always amazes me when the people I think "have it all" think they have nothing at all. Come to think of it, I could be one of those people. They too envy what they don’t have
and spend great gobs of time looking at others and coveting their
lives.
The subject of envy is a fascinating one. Even those of us who
know with great certainty that money doesn’t mean happiness and
processions are not the key to life spend an awful lot of time feeling it.
Still, it’s hard not to want, not to long for. Even if we know
that we’ve got a pretty good thing; desire fuels so much of what we
do. My friend and fellow blogger from Stuttgart
put it well:
"I am on the whole content with my life, from one moment
to the next I am on average very happy," he writes in Udgewink.blogspot.com. "I have the knack (or the character defect,
take it as you will) of being able to derive joy from very simple
things: Show me a nice sunset and I’m happy for the rest of the
week.I’d like to have more money, sure. It would be nice to just walk
into the store and buy a bicycle, without calculating which meals I’d
have to skip to pay for it. It would be nice to have no debts, not to
feel a flash of panic every time the doorbell rings. It would be nice
not to know the income-tax office’s repo man by name (true).
On
the other hand, there were times when I earned substantially more
money than now, and I was not happier then. The things that are
missing from my life (summarize them as "love and family")
cannot be bought."
I’ve never been one to suppress my envy.
I know it can come across as ungrateful, as hopelessly bourgeois,
as petty, capitalistic, and self-denigrating. And blind. At minimum,
the way people live in Park Slope is way beyond the standard of
living in most parts of the world, in most parts of the United
States, in most parts of Brooklyn.
It’s important to get real and get educated about this so one has
a frame of reference: some sense of reality.
But still, envy is envy is envy is…
When I wrote those pieces about Jonathan Safran Foer and Jenifer
Connelly I was accused of being hostile, of being jealous, of
knocking others for what I can’t have for me.
But I guess, in the expression of envy, I attempt to exorcise it
as well. Exposing it for what it is helps a litttle. I need to get
that nasty green stuff out of my system from time to time.
Excellent. You summed up the Park Slopian utopian envy-bred fantasy very well. I’ve experienced the full range of all you describe. I got my 1st start on envy, as a just out of college pup back in the late 80’s r.e. boom, sharing an apt in the Slope with my college GF. At that time, my envy was full-blown. Who were all these Saab-driving yuppies and how on earth could they afford this lifestyle. I felt a tangible insecurity that I might be hopelessly left behind in this rat race for acquisition.
Now, as a prime, 4-story, newly renovated, brownstone, owning, Sloper, I’ve come full circle. A nice couple across the street once told me “We have house envy… we’ve been watching your renovation over the past year and are soooo…. envious”. Of course, they meant it in an optimistic, good natured way. And I knew exactly what they meant.
Am I still envious? Sure, why not, somebody’s b-stone is always even more nicely renovated, on a better block, etc. and let’s not discuss how I envy the celebrity owners of townhouses on quaint tree-lined streets in the West Village. And last summer, I was at a Slope party, only to discover that we were nearly the only b-stone owners that did not have a weekend house in the Hamptons or Upstate (and these were “old slopers” not finance/law moguls). But, whoa, I don’t want to get too carried away here.
I must admit, that wearing this relatively new mantle of proud, envied, homeowner is a bit unsettling. It’s a tough image to live up to (I say this jokingly). But seriously, sometimes, I long for the simplicity of renting, instead of worrying about all the little undone projects around the house, the rip-off contractors, the boiler blowing up, etc.
So, what’s my point. I don’t really have one, except to say that you struck a chord. If I had a point though, it would be that PS is really the sum total of all of us: the old slopers, the new slopers, the renters, the owners, the hipsters, the yuppies, the parents and children, the childless by choice, the singles, the married, the straight, the gay. As Slopers, we are at once extremely diverse in ways that are extraordinarily appealing, yet often so uniformly homogeneous in our quasi-bohemiam-bourgeoise aspirations that it is sometimes utterly nauseating. I really do mean that in a totally non-judgemental sort of way.
Envy makes the world go around. Where would capitalism be without “keeping up with the Joneses”? An openly acknowledged envy is in any case (IMHO) better than the sour grapes or Leveller rhetoric of sayinng “they shouldn’t”.