" 'Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.'
— Sarah Bernhardt
"Driving home the other day, I heard on the radio that as the stock market has risen, so have the salaries of corporate bosses that take stock options as part of their compensation. This year, the head of Disney made $10 million, another guy in L.A. made $45 million, and that's not even considering Bill Gates. I could feel my blood turning green with envy, and all sense of gratitude for my own life — that I have a wonderful, loving family, close friends, a beautiful house, fundamentally good health — went flying out the window. 'If only I could have just one of their many millions,' I thought, 'then my life would be happy.'
"The truth is, of course, that happiness is an inside job, and beyond the subsistence level, money truly has very little to do with our happiness. But most of us are convinced that money can indeed buy happiness. The universality of that feeling struck me a few years ago when I read about a study that asked people how much money they thought they needed to be happy. Everyone, no matter what they made, thought they needed more. People who made $20,000 thought $30,000 would do it; folks at $45,000 were convinced $65,000 was the magic number, people at $100,000 were sure $200,000 was it. The only thing that changed was that as people's incomes grew, their magic number grew exponentially (proving like nothing else that the 'gimme hole' only grows through feeding). I realized then that there is something in human nature — well, at least in contemporary Western human nature — that will always long for more and envy those who have it, and the only way to deal with that trait is to acknowledge it — Oh, there you are again — and turn our attention back to what matters.
"Here's a practice for dealing with envy. Spend one day with one pocket of change and one empty pocket. Each time you find yourself envious of someone, put a coin in the empty pocket and ask yourself, 'What is there that I am noticing in the other person that I want to find in myself?' (Because you wouldn't notice it if it weren't already in you.) If it's money, is it the freedom? The chance to play that money buys? A sense of security? Whatever it is — more play, a sense of security, free time — you can work on getting more of it in your life, no matter the circumstances.
"I can choose to spend my time envying Bill Gates, the housewife who doesn't have to work because her wealthy lawyer husband provides for all her needs, and the person down the street who just inherited a large estate from his mother, or I can begin to understand what I am really longing for in myself.
"I use envy as a trigger to remember that I want to do a better job of giving myself away, so that I will experience a true sense of richness, no matter what my material resources. I can't keep the green-eyed monster from rearing its ugly head from time to time, but I can use its appearance to rededicate myself to using myself fully on behalf of the world as a whole. The feeling of abundance — great fullness — that doing the work our soul is here to do is better than any old million dollars."
