My first job when I lived in Buffalo was working for a social services agency called Crisis Services. Crisis Services did about what you would imagine: staffed a telephone hotline with volunteers who murmured soothingly to depressed and distressed callers, offered support services to survivors of rape and domestic violence. The agency also operated an Outreach department, which was where I toiled away with my newly-minted Master of Social Work degree.
In Outreach, there was a great big whiteboard on the wall with the names of mental-health clients in various stages and levels of crisis. All that was necessary for someone to become a client was for someone --a spouse, neighbor, parent, friend, counselor--to call Crisis Services and let us know that the prospective client was mentally ill and possibly dangerous to self or others. Much of the time people who called in to the suicide hotline would be referred across the hall to us for further evaluation. We'd open a file, fill out an intake form, schedule a visit on the whiteboard, and be off.
Our job as Outreach counselors was to go out in pairs, assess the mental health (or lack thereof) of clients, not to mention whether they really were a danger to anyone, and try to determine the best course of action. Often the best course of action was getting the person to a local emergency room so they could be evaluated by hospital staff for a possible psychiatric admission.
Unsurprisingly, this suggestion often did not go over well with people who had never felt better since going off their medication. I mean, when you're on those heavy meds you totally lose the recognition that you're able to fly, and/or that your seven year old child is possessed by the devil and must be sacrificed. So you can totally see why people would be willing to sacrifice the appearance of "sanity" for that kind of clarity. Unfortunately, the less enlightened, like the manager of the building whose roof you were trying to fly off of, or the other parent of that seven year old child, usually disagreed. Strenuously. And that is when they would call Outreach.
We went out in pairs because there is safety in numbers, and because two heads are better than one when it comes to recognizing mental illness. And because one person needed to keep the client engaged in conversation while the other surreptitiously went out to the car, plugged the lunchbox-sized car phone into the cigarette lighter, and summoned the ambulance for transport and police for backup. Because we covered the whole county, and were available 24/7, we went into some pretty dicey neighborhoods at times that people with legitimate business would not be out on the street. At those times, especially for a young and nervous girl such as myself, it was a toss-up whether it was better to be alone in a house with a mentally ill and potentially dangerous individual, or out on the dark street in a car that had had all its hubcaps when it pulled up to the curb a half-hour before.
Each pair of Outreach workers included one counselor with a Bachelor's degree, and one with a Master's degree. Only someone with a Master's degree had the legal authority to authorize a client's involuntary transport.You might think that it gave me a sense of importance to have this level of authority, to be the "lead" partner, and you would be wrong. What it gave me was a terrible sense of guilt, like I had pushed ahead of someone who had been patiently waiting in line. Although we were all, looking back, so young (50 year olds tend not to spend their midnights tooling around the dark streets in search of schizophrenics), at 23, I was the youngest of the lot. The ink was barely dry on my degree.
In contrast, most of the Bachelor's level counselors had been roaming the mean streets for at least a couple of years. They had more experience, they had excellent judgment, and they had a way of talking to the clients that often led to a likely involuntary transport coming around and agreeing to go voluntarily to the ER. These outcomes consumed less time and fewer resources, and preserved the dignity of the clients. Probably the most gifted counselor in this regard was a guy named Anthony.
Anthony was short and wiry, with dark hair and a beard that were always neatly trimmed, and lively black eyes that could hold mirth and compassion at the same time. Fearless but not reckless, he was one of the most genuine people I've ever met. Though our clients tended not to be known for their gracious housekeeping or their hygiene, Anthony was never put off by the environments in which we worked. He'd plunk himself down on a stained and sagging couch next to a smelly, hallucinating client and...just talk. As if the client were an honest-to-God person or something. I mean, talk about radical.
And Anthony wouldn't pussyfoot around the reason for our visit, or downplay the concerns of the person whose call had initiated it. But neither would he bash the client over the head with the assumption that he was crazy, or dangerous, or a problem to be solved. Anthony talked, and asked questions, and listened, and thought. He spoke softly and kindly, and always honestly. If he thought someone needed to go to the hospital, he'd tell them so. More often than most, he could get them to agree. He was a master.
I recognized how fortunate I was to have Anthony's good example to learn from (although I would argue that that level of skill can't be learned, only emulated, by those who weren't born with it). But it also made me feel tremendously guilty that while he was so gifted and insightful, I, with my inexperience and blundering, was the one nominally in charge. I shyly admitted as much to Anthony one rainy evening as he was driving us to a call, and allowed as how I wouldn't blame him for resenting the counselors with Master's degrees. Didn't he?
"No," he replied, and I instantly believed him, though I needed clarification. In my mind, it was a foregone conclusion that if one had more skill and experience at a job than someone else, who got more authority and better pay for the same work, one would be bitter and jealous and resentful. I would be bitter and jealous and resentful.
But Anthony went on to explain, in his straightforward way, that he knew what the Master's counselors were authorized to do. He knew what they got paid. "If I wanted that," he said, "I'd get a Master's degree." And then we talked about something else, until we arrived at our call and Anthony persuaded a hostile and depressed self-mutilating young lesbian to go and talk to the Psych ER staff at the county medical center. She only agreed to go if she could ride in his car instead of his ambulance. He agreed, even though it was totally against protocol, because Anthony also had a pretty keen sense of which rules were worth breaking and which clients were likely (or not) to carjack him. This is another gift for which I deeply admired him.
But not as much as I admired his simple understanding of this truth: if there's something, or someone, of which you're envious, the envy isn't the end of the story, but the beginning. You can let the envy have you, and it will be more than happy to consume you, because that is what envy does.
Or you can take that envy and use it as a tool, an alarm clock, to wake you up to what you really want. Your brother just bought his dream house and instead of being thrilled, you feel your heart contracting? Maybe you ought to start saving for yours. Law school classmate just make partner and your first catty thought is that you always got higher grades than she? Maybe you should spend that time at the office revising briefs instead of playing Farmville and resting on your laurels. Friend announce that she's writing--or publishing--that book she's always had in her? Protesting to yourself that you were always "the writer" in your circle of friends? Apparently, not the only one. And not, for sure, unless you put fingers to keyboard and actually...write.
In the twenty years since my friend Anthony gave me the gift of his non-envy and the reason for it, here some corollaries I've come to realize:
- Life is not a zero-sum game. If your sister or your best friend or your coworker wins--at whatever--it doesn't mean you lose. Losing the assumption that it does is the first step to loosening envy's claws from around your throat, and gives you the ability to celebrate loved ones' successes with a true and whole heart.
- Someone else getting what you want not only doesn't mean you can't have that thing, it's proof positive that the thing is possible to achieve.
- But not without effort and preparation. Take a close look at the person you're envious of and what it took them to achieve that goal. Those thirty pounds didn't just fall off of your sister's waist. She was working them off at the gym for the last six months while you were sitting on your couch, eating Cheetos and watching Dancing with the Stars.
- You can get what you want. You just may not get it right away. Don't give up. Keep moving, even if you're not moving quickly. Any progress is still progress.
- The person who just achieved that thing you want, contrary to your dark imaginings, does not now think she's better than you. That's your fear talking. Your college roommate who just got engaged doesn't think she's too good to hang out with single, unwanted, loveless, pitiful you. She is, in fact, dying to introduce you to her fiance's cute and quirky brother. Because people who are happy want the people they love to be happy, too. Let them help you with that.
Remembering these things will help you recognize envy for the soul-sucking, life-shrinking parasite it is. Let it whisper your own desires in your ear. Then fling it to the ground, and stride off confidently in the direction of your dreams.
