Green with Envy : Part 6

Green with Envy: A Whole New Way to Look at Financial (Un)Happiness
by Shira Boss

(Page 6 of 7)

The awareness and concern over what other people have is an issue for us when we notice we have less, and also when we have more. When I lived in the Middle East I learned about the belief in the "evil eye." Everywhere you go in some regions, you are stared down by blue eyes, mostly flattened disks of colored glass. One hangs at the entrance to every home, from the rearview mirrors of taxis, and near a business' cash register. Cafe owners cement them into the sidewalks in front of their cafes, factory owners paint them on the sides of their factories. Small eyes are wired into the designs of jewelry, sewn on to the fringe of hand towels, glued to the tips of toothpicks. Recently they came up with a new way to get the eyes into their lives: melting them into the sides of tea glasses. What, visitors always ask, is with the eyes everywhere?

They are not the evil eye itself, they are warding off the evil eye. The evil eye is, essentially, envy. These people believe that if you enjoy good fortune, you'd better look out because others will envy you and you will attract negative energy. You'll be struck down. The thinking is similar to that of ancient Greece, when mortals were cautious about having too much fun or achieving too much success because the gods could get envious and bring them down. That is why modern-day business owners are especially careful to engage the talismanic services of the blue eyes. They want to do well, they certainly seek good fortune, but they don't want to appear to be doing well. The eyes help with that predicament.

At first I laughed this off as silly superstition. Now, however, having been through tough times and the emotional and social havoc they wreak, I am a believer in the evil eye. I don't know if blue charms help prevent it, but the evil eye itself - the destructive force of envy - seems very real. Maybe seeing the blue eyes everywhere helps people keep their own envy in check because they are constantly being reminded of it, that it is wrong and that they don't want it in their lives. As for myself I don't know if living among the eyes when we were under hardship would have helped me keep perspective, but, disconcertingly, what I saw happening during that time is this: When things were rolling along great for friends, I got glum. I didn't exactly wish them ill, but I didn't genuinely celebrate for them, either. And believing that life's cycle of ups and downs would spin around to everyone eventually did make me, very privately, almost shamefully, feel better.

Tina decided to launch a new career as an interior designer. My mom has a really good decorator, she explained, and I've always been interested in it.

She started taking classes at the same time my husband entered business school. The two of them commiserated about having homework; John and I commiserated about having to do the cooking while our spouses studied.

But on our side of the wall, our talk was not about how similar we were to our neighbors but about how aggravatingly different. When my husband was accepted to business school we nearly cried out of relief and happiness. We had decided that if he didn't get in, he would have to go back to his country and work there again for a while. Going back to school meant our taking on six figures of student loans and braving two more years on a single income, but it also meant we could stay together, and it meant - or we had to believe it meant - nearly being guaranteed a well-paying job after two years.

Tina, on the other hand, had voluntarily given up a well-paying job and was going back to school on a whim because she happened to be interested in it. To fill her idle time, apparently. To amuse herself.

Or so we figured. After a few months of classes, something shocking happened.

Okay, I was not deliberately eavesdropping, but our building has very thin walls. Really, everybody knows this. You don't have a conversation in the hallway or while waiting for the elevator if you don't want the neighbors in on it. Usually this is a drawback.

Yet Tina had, for some very odd reason, come up to her apartment talking on her cell phone, and rather than entering her apartment, she conversed in the hallway, right outside our doors.

And here's what I - inadvertently! - discovered: Things were not as they had seemed. As I heard what she told her friend, I was not only fascinated but guiltily thrilled.

We're paying $115 for cable. Say, $90 for our cell phones. Car insurance is, like, $120 a month. Electricity, a hundred bucks, about ...

Copyright © 2006 by Shira J. Boss

About the Author

I grew up in Flint, Michigan, a gritty but wonderful place to grow up. I studied economics and political science undergrad at Columbia University, and went back there for master's degrees in journalism and in international affairs. In between, I've lived and worked in Saint Petersburg, Russia (where I edited the cultural section of the main English-language newspaper), in Paris (the only time in my life I've tried writing fiction - I'd rather wrap a boa constrictor around my neck now than have to make up a story), and in the Middle East (where I got to live the low-paid but high-adventure life of a foreign correspondent).