JUST THE OTHER DAY I NOTICED, yet again, that quite a lot of people have a way of being resentful when others have some sort of mild success. I wondered about this. It seemed to be the exact opposite of what we'd expect. Don't we expect our friends and acquaintances to be happy for our good fortune? Was I imagining this distinct tang of resentment I'd witnessed? Could people really be as mean-spirited as I was seeing them to be? So I thought I'd better inquire about this, by asking my friends. I was interested to note that many people felt the same way. In fact a huge number of people had noticed the same phenomenon.

So why is it that instead of being happy for someone else's success we find that others tend to want to criticize, belittle, and reduce those achievements? Perhaps we've even felt that way ourselves - resenting others' success, if only a little. That's not what's supposed to happen, at least as projected by Hollywood. There, if one does something good and praiseworthy everyone jumps up and down and celebrates and is happy. That's Hollywood. In the real world one is much more likely to run into false smiles and shrugs of negativity. 'Huh,' goes the refrain, muttered just beyond one's hearing, 'that's not so great. I coulda done that...' Perhaps what Hollywood movies do is to take those mixed feelings that exist within people and project them into two different sets of characters - the good guys who are happy, and the bad guys who scowl in the middle distance.

So I asked more of my acquaintance about this.

People relayed many examples, some of them rather sad. Joan and Lucy had been friends for decades, until Lucy got a contract to publish her book, whereupon Joan expressed delight but, somehow, began to make remarks that could only be interpreted as patronizing, as belittling. Lucy was puzzled, then tried to pretend she wasn't hearing what she most definitely was hearing, and eventually talked about her sense of hurt. Their conversation didn't get very far, but Lucy said she'd noticed a couple of things going on, and that behind Joan's protestations her critical attitude had not changed. It seemed that Joan just could not accept that her talented friend had met with some public success at last. It threatened the balance of their friendship because Joan had always lived in a bigger house, had always felt she was making more money than her friend. In fact she'd always felt superior, and now that was in question. She could admire her friend's talent as long as that talent never got any public recognition.

As the examples began to mount up I noticed a variant on the Joan and Lucy story. This was the subtle way people can look down on the specific type of success others enjoy. Very often people can be happy for what we achieve, as long as they can say in the next breath that of course you didn't get rich doing it (for example), or that you suffered in some other real or imagined way. Here's an example: 'Van Gogh was a genius, but of course, mentally terribly tortured...' Is that why we like his work? Because he was an artistic success who reassured us that success wasn't worth it at that price - which in turn excuses our own lack of successes?

This sort of attitude leads in its turn to the proliferation of myths we could all do without. The legends of the genius-as-a-madman is one. It's the sort of myth that makes good citizens everywhere shudder and resolve never to attempt anything artistic at all, and to persuade their sons and daughters to do likewise. Yet it's simply not an accurate assessment of reality. Shakespeare wasn't a madman-genius, neither was Goethe, Wordsworth, Ben Franklin, Stephen Crane, Picasso... the list goes on. And if people hadn't taken risks we'd never have had Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, George Washington, or Mother Theresa, either. The myth, it seems, could be a way of covering up something more important.

So I went back to asking questions. Artist friends of mine related how they'd maintained quite delightful friendships for years, and as long as they produced excellent work but made no money those friendships were stable. But once they began to make a decent income - that was when things fell apart in unexpected ways. In fact it seemed that success was less important as a dangerous component than their increasing financial status. The theme of this story seemed to be that people like success but they need to be able to look down upon the person who is successful, and money is the best way of doing that.

You can be successful, or you can be rich, but it seems you can't be successful and solvent without becoming a target for other people's covert rage.

It is time, therefore, to deconstruct this myth that so many people tell themselves to justify what are simply feelings of envy. Envy strikes us all, at some point, and its effect can be cancerous. It grows, sometimes completely out of control, and poisons what should be beautiful.

So let me give you a pretty basic example: It seems particularly true that those who have made money in their lives are very often only too aware of what it has cost them in terms of not doing what they truly wanted to do. They are aware that they've had to repress the artistic or expressive side of themselves. They're also aware that they've given up substantial amounts of freedom to gain the money they now enjoy. So when they see another person who has dared to be expressive, who has taken the risks of living that life, they can still hang on to their money and comfort as the consolations that validate their 'safer' life choices. If, however, they see an expressive person who is also making a decent living then it raises thorny questions for them. Could they, perhaps, have taken that route? Might it have paid off for them, too? And in their hearts they know they didn't take that route, and wish they had. The success others meet with pushes them up against their own compromises. No one likes to face those.

What we have here, it seems, are many examples of the sorts of things intelligent people will do as excuses for mediocrity; those consoling attitudes we all, to some extent, are inclined to preserve. And if we hold on to them they stop us from having to even try for the real success of life - personal actualization. For this is not about money. It's about the way our souls can grow when we are living our authentic lives. These resentments are the lies we tell ourselves about what we can do and who we can be.

And, in case you think I'm slanting my argument against certain professions I'd have to add that envy is always a result of us looking at ourselves and realizing we could have gone in that direction but didn't. Most often this occurs when we think about those 'unprofitable' directions - art, music, writing - that have a lower probability of making a decent living. We feel it because we recognize we've closed off a creative part of ourselves in the process.

Wherever this envy comes from it's essentially the same thing. It's Orphan archetype thinking. The Orphan archetype can be very negative about those who have lived boldly and taken real risks. After all, such people sometimes don't contribute very much back to the communities they live in, and that's a reasonable criticism. And it's time to move beyond it.

For when we resent others in this way, if we are honest about what's going on, we can see we are resenting only ourselves and our failure to act on our own impulses to develop in that specific direction. We have to see that we are the ones who are at fault. The cure for that is to start acting on those impulses, right away. It takes the same amount of energy as being critical, but the rewards are greater. When we do that we begin to appreciate the hard work that goes into these successes, and that makes us more aware of what others have done. It's harder to resent them when you've walked a few miles down their trail.

And when we do this we are entering the realm of the Pilgrim archetype. We are exploring what is actually going on, rather than adopting a defense that prevents us from seeing what is happening at all. We take off our blinkers and give ourselves a gift.

So let us wake up to what's happening, so we can be happy for others' successes and even for their attempts at success. Let us revel in the fact that people are doing their best to make personal progress. And let's also make sure we don't accept any excuses for our own lack of motivation. It's time to do some soul work, and there's no better time to start than now.

© Dr. Allan Hunter, 2009

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Allan Hunter was educated at St John’s College Oxford and is presently a professor of Literature at Curry College, Milton, Massachusetts, and a therapist. His two books on archetypes are Stories We Need to Know and The Six Archetypes of Love, both from Findhorn Press.

Visit www.allanhunter.net or www.sixarchetypes.com to find out more.