Seeing Envy with Broken Glasses

Wow.

This woman is so beautiful.Great hair. Flawless skin. Wonderful bone structure. Lovely big beautiful blue eyes. She must have a LOT of money, look at those expensive earrings and lipstick she has!!!See how she seems almost chameleon-like in her photo?At the right, she seems to be so discriminating, yet practical. At the right she looks so sexy. In the middle she looks like a young innocent girl. I am so envious of her. I wish I was her. She has it all!!


This "woman" is a 10 year old girl and this ad is a page from French Vogue. I am not really envious of her. I was just trying to prove a point. I couldn't ever be envious of a young girl because my nurturing instinct kicks in. A ten year old little girl should be playing jump rope.


The advertising world is based on and dependent upon the concept of envy, without it they wouldn't be able to sell anything through print ad, commercials and billboards. Women, especially, are bombarded with such ads, like the one above. People are constantly bombarded with images that they are insufficient or substandard and they need some material item to make their life better. I do not subscribe to this concept.



Envy is another one of those 7 deadly sins and is ruled by the planetary influence of the Moon. Envy is the desire for other's traits, beauty, social standing, talents or situations. Envy is a sin because the emotion is a representation of our overwhelming desire for worldly items. It is also a sin because the desire causes resentment toward the other person since the person who is feeling envious lacks that particular trait or item. I never really had a problem with Envy until recently. If I wanted something, I went and got it. If it required some work, I did it. If I did not get what I wanted, it wasn't meant to be. No big deal. A feeling of insufficiency is more of a state of mind than an actual condition.



Then, I lost it and for the first time in my adult life... I began to feel envy. I asked myself, "What the hell is wrong with me"? I was saying things and acting in a manner that was...well...NOT ME. The emotion slowly, yet strongly, overcame me. Did you know that envy leads to anger??? I felt like I was becoming a lunatic because the emotions were controlling me and overcoming me.
I decided that I couldn't become a lunatic. I don't have the luxury of sitting around for years dwelling on my issues. My friends were urging me on and being supportive of me. I have a job to do... and above all, my kids were depending on me. That nurturing aspect of the moon brought me back to center away from Envy. That was the key for me...coming back to center and focusing on what I have and not worry about my perception of someone else.The keys to my breakthrough were...focus and perception. The epiphany came when I broke my eyeglasses. The incident also happened to occur about the same time my chronic health condition was causing my eyesight to fail even worse. When I went through this temporary major loss of eyesight and I am really far-sighted, I realized some things about myself:

Sometimes, I have to step back in order to see the whole picture.

The image I perceive may not be the reality of the situation

The image I perceive tends to be darker than actual reality.

The image only provides a 2 dimensional representation, ie it lacks a component of dimension.

The mirror does not display the environment or the setting of reality




Note: The ad displayed above reminded me of this painting, Pablo Picasso's Girl Before a Mirror. In order to see Envy from a cubist's perspective, you have to step out of the box.