October 17, 2005
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Topic: fortunate and unfortunate…a maxim for controlling greed and jealousy
I’ve been feeling wise recently. In that spirit, I’ve come up w/ a maxim of sort for dealing w/ emotions, w/ our psychological states of being. You know how sometimes you recognize you’re in a mood, but there’s no thoughts behind it, and sometimes specific thoughts lead you to be in a mood. It depends on how closely you know your moods…but I’ve been paying a lot of attention both my moods and thoughts recently.
Recently, things have been relatively smooth sailing in my life, after a long stretch of time and a lot of life and personal changes. And…in this smooth stretch, when things feel good, there’s almost a temptation to want to hear that others are not doing as well, as well as the natural feeling of not wanting to hear about the successes of others. Those two emotions are greed / and jealousy. You hate someone who has something you want, and when you have it, you want it all to yourself.
I’ve come up w/ new words to help me frame the internal debate that goes on inside my mind, the debate that ultimately decides my thoughts and moods. And the new words I wish to use more often are “fortunate” and “unfortunate.” When things are going well…and I kind of want to feel good about it, I temper my mood by thinking, “Boy…I’m fortunate. Fortunate to have my health, home, friends, etc.” When things don’t go well, or when I hear of someone doing well themselves or doing much better than myself, I think, “Boy…that person has been fortunate.” Or…”I wasn’t so fortunate this time.”
By re-shaping the emotions of greed and jealousy into fortunate and unfortunate, you accomplish several things. First of all, you recognize the volatility of life. Fortune in its two forms, comes and goes. Just as material fortunate can vanish in an instant through flood, fire, or earthquake, non-tangible fortune is similarly ephemeral (first time using that word…i feel fortunate to have pulled that off!). So…when good fortune strikes, that does not mean it’s time to sit back and relax. Rather, be grateful for that good fortune, because it’s opposite, bad fortune, can sneak up on you at any time.
The second thing that is accomplished by grouping emotions into fortunate and unfortunate, is that it can help control “negative” emotion. By negative emotion, I mean emotions that are not only undesirable socially, but can be personally frustrating as well.
Have you ever done better than someone at something, whether it was school, sports, or socially, and feel a sense of pride, only to feel slightly sick that you feel that way, or sick at how your reaction made someone else feel, or simply sick that this person is not feeling as elated as you? That situation can be improved by feeling fortunate, instead of feeling “wildly successful,” “brilliant,” or any other emotion that boosts the ego.
A kid strikes out in baseball, and the next batter hits the winning home run. The kid is both happy at the team’s success, while angry that it wasn’t he who won the game. What to do? Perhaps tell the kid…”you were unfortunate this time,” recognizing that fortune is exactly that, relative to time. Likewise, the child might feel better himself by not only avoiding self-hatred, but by being able to openly welcome the success of the other player.
So…to bring this back to my own life, I feel really fortunate right now for many of the things I have, and the life I’ve been living as of late. At the same time, there are still things I feel unfortunate about. I feel unfortunate about not having my own apartment, while also feeling fortunate about living rent free, and spending quality time w/ people at home. That’s another important thing, fortune is relative. One man’s trash is another man’s treausre…that old saying. Well…here I’m applying it both to material and mental fortunes.
My sister went to a book club yesturday, where she was the only teacher amongst a group of businesswomen, several of whom owned their own places in Manhattan. We’re talking big money-makers, very fortunate people. Yet…my sister felt fortunate for her lifestyle, fortunate for a job that ended at 3pm, and fortunate for summers off.
I just finished reading a wonderful book called Franny and Zooey. The story, which takes place over the course of a day and involes 3 main conversations involving 4 characters, addressed a few of the points I have been writing about. Franny, the youngest of 7 children, talks about her disdain for academics. She goes on a College Daze type rant about higher education, that at first left me tingling w/ joy all over. But as I’ve realized, and as her brother Zooey tells her, the world and people are not absolutes. The system is not 100% wrong. Some people do experience fortune, where you may have experienced unfortune. Some people are fortunate and succeed in the classroom, but we should not be angry at their knowledge, or their experience, and should recognize that those who have succeeded in the academic realm are not guaranteed any other fortune in their lives, nor do we know whether they have also been suffering many unfortunes that we will never see.
I think this idea is a pretty strong one, one that can be applied for the benefit of our lives, and possibly helpful in understanding others.
