I recently read an article by a Korean author, that partly attributed South Korea’s economic recovery from poverty to prosperity to the envious, comparative nature of South Koreans. This made me pause for I rarely think of envy as a positive force/emotion. When I envy a friend for having a lavish country house or for having a bountiful extended family for holiday revelry, I feel like a slouchy, cross-eyed goon who is incapable of positive action.

“Richard Smith, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky who studied envy writes that the feeling typically arises from a combination of two factors. The first is relevance: an envied advantage must be meaningful to us personally. A ballerina’s beautiful dance is unlikely to cause envy in a lawyer, unless she once had professional dancing aspirations of her own. The second is similarity: an envied person must be comparable to us. “

Truth, Richard! When my kind and generous friend from law school who comes from a similarly modest background deigned to purchase a sprawling, ranch-style weekend home in upstate New York years ago, I felt ashamed of my growling envy that made me want to avoid her temporarily. For growing up as a scholarship kid in NYC private schools, I often got invited to my friends’ idyllic, non-essential homes and glorified their ability to escape the city grid.

In particular, I had a childhood friend whose soft-spoken father was a talented, self-trained architect and treehouse builder (before treehouses were so revered), and he used to teach my friend and I to draw when I was their frequent weekend guest. (My mother isn’t creative so I valued this creative instruction). He’d converted a gray-planked East Hampton barn into the kind of shabby-chic abode worthy of Architectural Digest. Needless to say, when I’d returned home from a weekend of gorging on my friend’s mom’s casually-offered, homemade berry muffins, sleeping beneath hand-sewn quilts that made me feel like Nelly Olson, jumping the waves of white sand beaches and endingthe day in front of a crackling fire place to play board games, I would return to NYC, mooney-eyed and a wee-bit sullen. The perils of comparison!

Can one be envious of things that aren’t priority? Perhaps not. I’ve never been envious of athletic abilities as sports only interest me minimally (though I may hazily admire an athlete). Similarly, I’ve never been at a concert and given spiked looks to a talented musician or wanted to sink an incredible litigator as she dominates oral argument before the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court (despite the fact that I am a litigator).

I despise how envy roils me and makes me feel achey. “Since envy is triggered only when you come up short, that’s part of the reason why it is experienced as such an “ugly” emotion.” Certainly, I’ve found when I’ m feeling particularly down on myself, I easily spiral into envying all stripes of people, even those who are completely dissimilar to me; it’s not only the newbie, under- the-radar published author I’m envious of; I deeply envy Zadie Smith– a long-established author of considerable literary heft that I will (sigh) never write or look like. (I also envy Donna Tartt and a flurry of other authors whom I have no right to hold in comparison). Be warned, in one of these cranky moods, I’m probably jealous of YOU.

As I head to South Korea this year with my immediate family, which will be the second time I’ve been back there since birth, I have been feeling what my therapist has called, ” an underlying loneliness,” that is supposedly not uncommon for adoptees. It’s my realization that when I return to Korea, I have no family to visit. No blunt Korean relatives to tell me I need more moisturizer on my face or pluck gray hairs out of my head. No one to ladle me a bowl of homemade Kimchi soup.

My only ode to being adopted will be a quick detour from sampling fried street food and cafe-hopping; I plan to drag my family to the Noryangjin police station in Seoul to stare at the drab stone building where I was left as a baby and squeeze my children tight–no doubt weeping publicly in a patently ugly way. Or maybe I’ll keep it light for vacation’s sake and ham it up. I’ll sprawl out on the sidewalk before the station with a comically large prop pacifier and a baby bonnet on my head and my kids will hold me. (If that happens, I’ll make sure to share the photo with you). Then, I promise, we’ll go shop at the underground malls, soak at a Korean jimjilbang (spa), and stuff our faces with hotteok.

Maybe it’s also because it’s around Blue Monday (the third Monday of January that my friend Lisa told me about recently)–but I’ve been moody and eager to count other peoples’ advantages when it comes to an abundance of friends and family instead of counting my own (and I know I have much to be grateful for so this is maddening). Visiting my mother in Ohio recently, I felt an acceleration of my heart rate as I heard my young male Uber driver explaining he had nine siblings and a banquet every Christmas for his deliciously raucous family. That son of a gun! Other than my husband and kids, my only close relative is my 88-year-old mother and I’m quite resigned to the fact that my Korean birth family will never be known to me). I am, indeed, often whining to my therapist that I feel like everyone has a community be it friends or family and I’m sidelined.

What can I do with feelings of envy other than stew and be a grating sour-puss? As one writer suggests, “in order to adjust the measurements that will neutralize your envy, you will have to diminish the source[of envy], elevate yourself, or do both.” This suggests I need to both discuss and investigate my feelings of inadequacy via therapy (surely a part of “elevating” myself, which I currently do) and also work to “diminish the source [of envy],” which for me might mean, make more efforts to create community for myself and my family such as joining the Lunar Collective, a NYC Jewish Asian group I have eyed that holds events like Lunar New Year pot luck dinners. Or maybe I can join a collective for artists and writers that a friend suggested so I can develop a group of creative friends that I lack now or much less compelling for me, get at least tangentially involved with my kids’ schools/ joining a synagogue. (Of course for my dream of owning a weekend home, I could brush up on my driving skills and search for a better paying job so I can contribute towards my weekend home ownership goal). But I am a lazy, somewhat complacent person so I worry I won’t do all the hard work required to keep my envy in check. And then what?

So far (kudos to me), I’ve managed not to lapse from a “benign,” harmless envy to a “malicious” envy that would have me wish misfortune on those with large families, country homes and/or published novels. I like to think I don’t regularly experience schadenfreude (pleasure in other’s misfortunes). So rest assured, I’m not about to torch your country home/yachts. At least not this week.

I was disturbed to read that those who do experience schadenfreude are more likely to engage in toxic behavior to experience the joy in others’ pain. In one study, a researcher rounded up Boston Red Sox and New York Yankee fans — two teams that have one of the most bitter rivalries in sports. She monitored the fans brain activity as she showed them video clips of unfavorable moments for their rival team, like a rival player striking out in a key moment versus another team. Great pleasure was often derived just from witnessing the failure. But the more disturbing part of the study was that, “two weeks later, participants showing the most pleasure (as measured by their brain activity) were much more likely to say they might heckle, threaten, or even hit a rival fan.”

Certainly, the movie Saltburn that I devoured recently at a friend’s behest, does not advance the idea that envy is a constructive force and quickly illustrates how this sinful emotion can morph into schandenfreude and then violence. In the beginning of the film, we the audience believes that Oliver Quick, the quiet, dorky scholarship student who is new to Oxford University, simply admires a group of students that are dripping in bounty, in particular a charming, strapping student named Felix played by Euphoria‘s Jacob Elordi; we quickly learn as Felix inexplicably adopts Oliver as his new friend of the month that our middle-class protagonist houses darker, creepier feelings of envy for the aristrocrats.

The film does, at least initially, give us reasons to like Oliver. I felt empathy for him when one of his landed peers describes him as “a scholarship kid who get his clothes from amfAR” because I know it sucks to be branded an outsider by your garb when fitting in is your goal. If this film is at all accurate, Oxford is nothing like the liberal arts midwestern college I attended in the 1990s where I earned the comic, hyperbolic knick name “G.G. (Glamor Girl) ” by my friends solely because I sometimes wore casual skirts and tights in a crowd of plaid, button-down shirts and jeans. That is to say, my college was refreshingly stripped of markers of wealth and status and I vastly enjoyed this dowdy socialism-lite. (This respite was brief as I returned to NYC for law school and watched in disbelief as I observed fellow students donning designer clothing and really high heels to sit for the excruciatingly long bar examination!).

Of course marking one’s social standing/class via clothing and accessories is here to stay. Recently, a friend told me that fourth graders at her daughter’s private school sent out a large group text that didn’t include the entire grade of girls in which the offenders agreed to show up the next day at school in Lululemon. I know there are greater injustices in the world, but I have some empathy for the unsuspecting minority of girls who showed up to school in their mundane attire only to be greeted by a sea of knowing, giggling girls wearing the same uniform of designer stretch-wear. (Then there are those Stanley water bottles and excessive multi-step skin care regimens for third graders, ( no doubt influenced by South Koreans), which mark the have and have-nots).

Though this film is supposedly a satire of monied Brits, to me, it’s the envious and lowly middle-class outsiders that are really pummeled. See the bitter math dork at the start of the film who is the only person who lets Oliver sit by him at the storied dining hall for meals; he seems to revel in calling Oliver a “Norman no-mates,” dismissing the student body as “vapid cunts” and later gleefully explaining that Oliver and he aren’t invited to what seems like an all class party. (I, like Oliver, as a new kid in many schools, spent many meals gritting my teeth to bear the collective misery of a table of misfits. I vividly remember how in the sixth grade, a popular girl named Anna at the Hewitt School for girls took heart and randomly invited me to sit at her crowded table of revelers. Friends, let it be known, I didn’t turn back and acknowledge the kids I was abandoning. Nor did I get up slowly from my table with reserve and grace. I bolted.).

The insecurities of an outsider straddling the world of the uber-rich is well-depicted in this film. When Oliver is at a bar ordering a drink and Felix whom Oliver has admired from afar, calls out to him to join his group of wealthy, beautiful friends for shots, Oliver turns around in a half-circle–disoriented. For who amongst us, can’t identify with being beckoned by someone we perceive as better than us and questioning if said person is actually addressing you (a/k/a the Pretty in Pink Molly Ringwald and her crush scene). (This indeed once happened to me as a young woman at a college party when a Greek God of a man whom I had admired from afar, spotted me across his dorm room as he stood with a circle of friends and curled his finger in my direction, which prompted me to look lemming style from left to right–before stumbling towards him).

I also appreciated the scene in which Oliver visits Felix’s family’s labyrinth English estate and enters the foyer with his wayward suitcase to face the family’s stern, disdainful butler; (this butler is a worthy successor to the chilling Ms. Danvers from Rebecca); we see Oliver stare up at the impossibly high ceilings and repeatedly mumble “wow” like the perfect yokel. (I like to think, perhaps naively, that I am more suave in my admiration for other people’s extravagances). This mildly cringey moment reminds me of a time I brought a law student intern to the Southern District of New York’s federal courthouse in Manhattan for a case we were working on and we stood in the high, domed ceilinged lobby. In front of opposing counsel, my earnest intern looked up at the ceiling moldings and said “wow, this is what federal court looks like. Wow.” (I looked over and opposing counsel was smirking).

Of course as the film progresses, my identification with Oliver quickly faded. Oddly, the director Emerald Fennell made the wealthy characters more like able and saddled the working-class/middle-class protagonist with every negative trait. I may be wrong but that’s not how satire is supposed to work! Think of all the Jane Austen novels mocking the rich. (The humble protagonist is usually a gem). I was surprised to read that Fennell meant us to be rooting for Oliver until the very end since I left Team Oliver after all his stalking (and slurping). Though Felix’s family is portrayed as shallow, socially isolated and some dim-witted, you can’t deny they are a riot, e.g. Felix’s mom: “I was a lesbian for a while, you know, but it was all a bit too wet for me in the end. Men are so lovely and dry.” Plus, Felix, when he barely knows Oliver considers that Oliver may need help paying a large bar tab for Felix’s friends, which frankly sets his character apart from many wealthy people I know who seem unaware of other’s struggles.

Sure Felix’s family are ridiculous with their mandatory black tie dinners, insistence on being surrounded by beauty 24/7, ignorance of their servants names and rigid yet nonsensical breakfast routines but they come up with transgressive, goofy fun, e.g. running through fields naked and such. Plus who could forget Felix’s tour of his family’s English estate in a linen shirt that hints at his torso every time he passes a lit window. In his fantastic, breezy tour of his estate for Oliver, the “hideous Rubens”, a broken piano, a corner where he fingered his cousin and “dead relees , dead relees” are given equal weight and a wave of dismissal . (I’d like him to perk up every staid, high-brow institutional tour I ever go on).

It’s a truism that rich people come up with wacky leisure activities. One winter break in college, while visiting my mother in Cleveland, I went on the ultimate Wasp-y date with a blonde guy who took me to his family’s country club to drink and play outdoor paddle ball on a heated court while a veritable mid-western blizzard raged. Despite the fact that his friends were pompous, I did manage to have fun once I imbibed a hot toddy or two and soaked up the absurdity of sporting outside in the heavy snow without a coat. See further eccentricities of the very wealthy I’ve noted like customizing a wicker basket chair to conceal the ugliness of a toilet. See the myriad questionable aesthetic/design choices of celebrities that comedian Dan Rosen @thedanrosen mocks.

As someone who appreciates any film or book involving class conflict, it’s no surprise I’m attempting to write a novel set in the New York City private school world that features a teacher who dislikes his privileged students and is increasingly drawn to the ideas of his college friend who is a radical left terrorist group/eco- terrorist. As I research profiles of these educated, middle-class white men who go onto to become environmenta/anti-capitalist terrorists, I can’t help wonder why I’m fascinated by them. Maybe because they seem fairly normal for the most part (unlike their extreme right brethren). For example, one eco terrorist who was featured in a New Yorker profile, lists the following as things he hates: “the rich, Nazis, Trump, Apple, tehcnocrats,computers, cellphones.” This could be a quote from countless people I know who are not sociopaths. That said, could these terrorists be regular people who are unable to contain the seed of class envy? For someone prone to jealousy and comparison, I don’t like learning of their descent to ignomy.

Who are you envious of? Are they people with qualities that are important to you and /or people who are similar to you? Has envy ever spurred you to do something positive or alternatively evil/bad?

xoxo