Mr. Potato Head Can Teach Us About Envy
Because we don't get to plug in attributes
Envy is the worst of the seven deadly sins. It’s the only sin whose opposite––kindness––is not toxic in excess. Think how dull it would be to forego any Pride in favor of constant Humility or to forego any Lust in favor of constant Chastity. It’s also self-evident that Sloth, Gluttony, and Wrath have their necessary moments in any well-lived life.
But envy is different. It has no purpose except to infuriate because to envy means wanting what someone else has, usually with no way to get it. Hence, below, Giotto’s famous depiction of Envy afflicted by a snake thrusting from her mouth only to bend back around and strike at her eyes. For good measure, she’s standing in flames.1
On Substack these past few weeks, envy has been the “inside baseball” topic. There was a bonfire of envy involving Glennon Doyle, a famous writer.
Glennon started a Substack newsletter and quickly gained 200,000 readers, many of whom became her paying customers. She soon departed Substack after being assailed by a barrage of complaints from other Substack writers envious at her quick success.
I didn’t follow the fracas as it was going on, but I became intrigued afterwards as I read various “takes” on the controversy from writers I admire.
The envy of writers
Writers are a particularly envious group because we can conjure an equality and fairness of opportunity in winning success. We all have access to the same language and we all start with the same blank page. if we are truly talented and work hard then we should get the recognition the world owes to us.
But of course there’s nothing fair or egalitarian about writing. It is exceedingly rare that talent and diligence alone are enough to get us the fame and status we crave. As with most aspects of competitive life, success at writing depends also on luck and timing, connections and privilege.
uses the Glennon Doyle incident to write about the envy of writers from her own experience.“I know it well, that salty sting of deeply felt obscurity. The dull thrumming of ambition reaching forth and clutching at something that isn’t there, perhaps yet, or perhaps ever.” 2
Laura points out that when you send that resentment outward to disparage and bully another writer, you’ve succumbed to contempt. She sees the writers who chased Glennon Doyle away as a “contemptuous mob” hiding behind the false virtue of '“punching up.”
Laura writes:
“[The contempt] devalues and dehumanises you as it seeks to strip another of whatever they have that you think they shouldn’t.”
It’s Giotto’s snake coming back around to strike the envier. It’s the nihilism of toddlers who are deprived of a toy and would rather break it than see another child have it.
has a different take on the rancor against Glennon Doyle. In writing terms, Glennon is one of the few “haves” who seem to be increasing their share of status and income at the expense of other writers. Accordingly, Kirsten sees the envy of other writers through a political lens, as a symbol and symptom of the bigger problem of widening inequality in all aspects of American life.Kirsten writes:
“People are fed up with a tiny group of people consuming an outsized share of the resources while the majority of the population is forced to fight for the leftover scraps.” 3
My own history of envy
I count myself among that insulated “tiny group” of the privileged who have “an outsized share of the resources.” As such, I was perplexed by the rage until I read Kirsten'‘s take. Still, it was easier for me to relate to Laura’s point of view than Kirsten’s.
In any case, my privilege has not spared me from envy over the years. Everyone I know is susceptible.
Finance, which was my career for forty years, is a hotbed of envy. My mentor used to tell the story of handing out a three-million-dollar discretionary bonus to an employee who could barely restrain himself from throwing it back in my mentor’s face because the employee’s peer had gotten three-million five.
I was not immune from this distorted line of thought. At every stage of my career, I would compare myself to peers who were more successful, which usually meant they had started their own firms. For a very long time I thought my failure to do so was some deficiency in my character. A lack of nerve. And perhaps it was.
I remember being recruited by a legendary investor from Boston to come work for him. Some of his stars had left to start their own firms. I turned him down because our family life was wedded to New York City. When we moved ten blocks south from 85th and West End to 75th and West End, our children staged a revolt. So I knew Boston would have been a non-starter.
In an uncharacteristic bit of snark, the legendary investor responded to my demurral by saying, “Well, all the best people have left to start their own firms.” I believed him!
I sometimes think that until the last ten years or so, I had a fixed amount of volatile envy that I would apply to the must vulnerable aspect of my life. If I was happy with my family and happy with my progress in my career, I could always compare myself to the great men of history. My career involved moving money around; in their careers, they had shifted the course of history. Such thoughts could lead me flailing down a corkscrew path of existential despair.
In every case of being struck by envy, I blamed myself. It was my fault that I didn’t have what I coveted. So if my writing career falls flat, I assume I will blame myself. Of course, blaming yourself is easier to do when other aspects of your life can buttress your self-esteem.
Finally, Mr. Potato Head
My solution to envy is to ask a simple question. “Would I want to trade places completely and in every aspect with the person whose attribute is the object of my envy?”
The basis of this question is the impossibility of making yourself into a Mr. Potato Head of attributes. We don’t get to pick and choose.
I’ll keep my wife and family but I’ll plug in that person’s material success. I’ll keep my wife and family and I’m just fine with the career I had and my fortune, but I want to plug in that writer’s popularity and that other writer’s talent. And yes, I’ll take Daniel Day-Lewis’s face, symbolized by high cheekbones, which is not part of the Mr. Potato Head kit but perhaps should be!
The current me wouldn’t think about trading places with anyone. if that’s true, then my envy seems as childish as Mr. Potato Head. 4
My Peak Envy
But when I was in my teens and up until I was 21, my envy of the guys who had beautiful girlfriends, whether in real life or in the movies, was so deep, my longing so fierce and all-encompassing, that in the moment I would have traded places with any of them time and time again.
Question for the comments: Have you ever had moments of Peak Envy where you would have traded places with someone?
The seven pairs are pride and humility, greed and generosity, lust and chastity, wrath and patience, gluttony and temperance, envy and kindness, and sloth and diligence.
I mean no disrespect to Mr. Potato Head. It’s a great toy and I can’t wait to play it again with my grandchildren.
Fun read, David. This came up in the novel chapter I just posted, as envy of a woman’s comfort in her own skin, her gentle confidence and command of a situation. As someone with lifelong self-consciousness, I have felt that envy.
When younger, I envied more visibly successful architects, until my work was published in magazines and won awards. Those are fleeting satisfactions at best. So, what was I really envying?
About ten years ago, I learned something about envy. I envied a well-known writer’s blog — her pithy, clever essays, her engagement with readers. When my inner voice urged, start your own blog, I did. It was so satisfying, I grew as a writer, and I’m still mining that boneyard for material. Maybe envy is our soul’s way of nudging us to take a risk and grow. And, as you so thoughtfully observe, to appreciate what we have.
When I catch myself envying someone (usually another writer), I remember that I am also envied. Envy thrives on ignorance of the envied person’s whole, complicated life. Sara B. Franklin, in her biography of the legendary editor Judith Jones, recounts a story of the role envy played in Jones’s life. Jones couldn’t have children and longed for them. Sylvia Plath, one of her authors, seemed to have the perfect life—marriage to a dashing fellow poet, big garden, burgeoning career, adorable child and another on the way. And Plath put up a good front. Jones had no idea of the anguish Plath was facing on her descent toward suicide.