I Wish I Were…
I hadn’t given this any thought in a long time–but last week while having dinner with a friend we got to talking about envy. I had almost forgotten about the big destructive fantasy that I carried around for all of my 20’s and most of my 30’s which was that everyone else’s life was easier and more glamorous than mine. There were tons of people having fun, going to parties, walking red carpets, being on soap operas, jetting off to distant locales and I was living in a tiny box on the Upper East Side of Manhattan being a temp secretary and trying to have a dance career. Of course I only compared myself to celebrities or very accomplished people, not the people I came into contact with in my regular life.
I was completely sure that these people’s lives were one delightful moment after the next, everything they did was in the flow and most of all…THE WORLD CAME TO THEM. They didn’t have to ask, chase, pursue, follow up or present. They didn’t do the calling–people called them. “They” just sat around their infinity pools with their friends while their private chefs made organic, low-cal delicious meals for them and waited for the next opportunity to arrive. Kind of like the show Entourage but without the obnoxious Jeremy Piven character.
For years, every time I cleaned my toilet my first thought was : “Look at my fabulous life, cleaning the bathroom! I’ll bet that Jennifer Anniston isn’t cleaning any toilets today!” As a matter of fact the only time she’s even held a toilet bowl brush is when it was being used as a prop. “How come she gets to not have to clean her bathroom and I’m standing here with my arm in the toilet? why her and not me?”
Whose music was I listening to back then? Patti LaBelle. Of course she has an incredible voice but when I played her CD’s I wasn’t focusing on the music but the fabulous life she must be living. What with the legions of adoring fans, the millions of dollars from all the hit records, the concerts, the traveling first class everywhere and then I would think: “when will someone come along and lift me from the bowels of obscurity and release me from my mundane existence!”
A certain NYC psychic that I saw in the 90’s told me when I called to make an appt. that she only had evening slots available. I remember grabbing one even though it was very inconvenient for me and thinking, wow, she’s totally in demand that’s amazing. What must it be like to have your phone ringing off the hook with people who want an appointment with you. When I went to see her, you would have thought that I was not even fit to breathe her air. Not because of the way she acted, because of the way I perceived things.
The scenarios I used to torture myself about other people’s wonderful lives were endless.
Every time I would take the bus down Fifth Avenue I would fantasize about the awesome lives of the people who lived in those buildings and I would think, “if only I could live in one of those apartments one day.”
We’ve all heard the Rolling Stones lyric: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.” I had the great fortune of being a personal trainer to the very rich. I didn’t plan it that way, it just happened. I got to hang out in those sprawling Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue apartments that I envied from the street. What was going on inside them was nothing like what I had imagined. I saw a lot of misery behind those facades .
One of my clients who lived in a beautiful penthouse apartment was also the author of a very spiritual book. I had read the book before I met her and actually had wondered about what an incredible life she must have living in a fabulous Manhattan penthouse and being a rich and famous author.
My fantasy of what her life was and the reality of what her life was could not have been more different. The first thing I got to learn was that even though her book was meant to heal and enlighten, she was very depressed and angry about her own life. She was constantly giving workshops in her apartment and renting rooms out to student boarders because she was so terrified about money. She ate the same dinner almost every night. A yam and a salad. She didn’t go out to dinner even though she could well afford it because she was socially awkward and didn’t really enjoy spending time with other people. She took three subways out to Queens every Thursday to spend the day with her elderly mother. She had terrible relationships with her children. Basically, she was a hot mess.
I worked with a lot of other people living what appeared to be beautiful lives of privilege that were actually very unhappy existences.
If you look at Jennifer Anniston’s life as a whole, she’s got a great career but I’m sure now that she’s 40 she’d trade it all to have someone to come home to every night.
The NYC psychic I later found out through a mutual friend, only had evening appointments because she worked during the day as a receptionist in a Dr.’s office. She eventually got divorced and had to move out of her swanky loft in tribeca.
Patti LaBelle endured the tragedy of losing her three sisters to cancer. She was diagnosed with diabetes in 1995 and in 2000 divorced her husband of 30 years. Last year she had a melt down on stage at one of her concerts.
I wouldn’t want to trade places with any of these women.
What I learned after taking the blinders off:
There is no such thing as a free ride.
Anything worth having takes a lot of sacrifice and hard work.
Money and fame are the biggest enablers of addiction.
There’s no such thing as an overnight sensation–no one ever talks about the 10 years the person worked at their craft before they finally got a break.
Don’t ever judge anyone’s situation, you never know what’s REALLY going on.
Everyone, I mean EVERYONE is struggling with something.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Envy is ignorance.” My Mother often reminded me to be thankful for all the things I don’t have that I don’t want. Turns out that they’re both absolutely right.