Subtract ... comparison
Warning signs your envy is out of control - and finding 'expansive comparison' instead.
Once I met a scientist who compared himself to Picasso.
He admitted this quietly, in a sheepish sort of way, when I asked him about the role of ego and ambition in his ground-breaking research. He said he did not feel competitive with other scientists, but that when he thought about his own life and his work in the long term, it was Picasso’s range and ambition and innovation he aspired to.
I loved the scientist for this. I loved that he was reaching for something grand, and was searching beyond his own field for a guide. The fact that his role model was not Darwin or Einstein or Galileo but instead the world’s most famous painter spoke to me of an optimistic, reaching, creative intelligence. It struck me that his approach was the kind of thing artists do, in making their work. Looking for inspiration everywhere – from other times, other genres, other cultures. Grabbing material and approaches from anywhere, and pulling it into the work.
The scientist came to mind because I have been thinking about artists and comparison, that thing we are constantly told not to do. Comparing ourselves with others, we learn, is a toxic trait, a path straight to misery, and we must train ourselves out of it. But I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I compare my work to that of other artists all the time, and I think it helps me become a better writer. But it’s true that there are damaging versions of comparison. So when does it harm, when does it help, and how do you know if your envy is out of control?
Competitive comparison: the problem of envy
I have three dear friends who may be the only writers I have ever known to be free of the common problem of artistic envy. I think they are highly unusual. It’s very good to be friends with people like this – the kind of people who, when you occasionally confess to your own shameful envious feelings, look at you as if you are speaking another language. They simply, truly, don’t understand. It is good to know this kind of person because they show you that envy is not the natural, inevitable state we are so often led to believe it is.
I am – sadly – not like these friends. I have most certainly envied fellow writers in my time, and I have also experienced the envy of others. I think I can say for certain that whether it travels from you to others, or from others towards you, envy is a poison that will embitter you, sour your talent, destroying your creative work and your friendships as you go. It is a poison that you can, if you choose, eradicate from your life.
But you’d better choose fast.
We all know artists whose talent has been diminished, clouded or even totally consumed by envy and bitterness. We all know it’s bad, and we are all ashamed of the tendency in ourselves. But I’m not sure we realise just how easily even a little bit of envy erodes our talent and any potential sense of fulfilment or joy. I’m also not sure we acknowledge how often we enjoy our envy, how much we like to cultivate and spread it.
In my early years as a writer I used to find others’ confessional accounts of their own envy – like this one and this one – deeply reassuring; I hoarded them and shared and read them repeatedly. They meant someone was telling the truth about ugly feelings, which meant I wasn’t alone, and it meant those feelings were somehow natural and inevitable. But over time something has shifted because these days when I see artists lengthily confessing to their envy – or not confessing it, but subtly or nakedly displaying it – I just feel depressed and bored.
This corrosive, competitive comparison has a few different sources, I think. One of them is anxiety, particularly around crunch points in an artist’s life (opening a show, applying for funding, publishing a book, watching the dreaded prize or grants lists come out) – those times when expectations and reality converge in mostly disappointing ways. A lot of this is to do with financial pressure. We all know that the economics of living as an artist or a writer are deeply stressful, and when you’re stony broke and see other writers ‘succeeding’ while you are ‘failing’, it’s no fun.
But another wellspring of envy is what seems to me a fairly juvenile conception of ‘fairness’; the dichotomy of the deserving-vs-undeserving. This springs from some sense of entitlement. Maybe you have not even admitted this to yourself yet, but I think it’s often lying there deep inside. This entitlement – to success and recognition – comes by right of … what? Our parents’ belief in our specialness? Our English or art teacher’s?
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Subtraction to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.